


Beneath The Brine

by BoneJanggles



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: F/M, No Mind-Wipe AU, Psychological Manipulation, Slow Burn, genre: grimdark light, like really slow im sorry but it has to be this way, some jeantonio for extra flavor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25764418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoneJanggles/pseuds/BoneJanggles
Summary: VILE doesn't mind-wipe Gray after the Poitiers debacle, but they do decide some aggressive reeducation is in order. Gray is forced to attend evil summer school before he is allowed back into the field. Carmen is shocked to discover that actions have consequences, no matter how benign their intentions.
Relationships: Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep/Gray | Crackle
Comments: 32
Kudos: 157





	1. 2018, Return to VILE Island

**Author's Note:**

> Is anybody still in this fandom? Lol.
> 
> This AU is sort of based on the assumption that Gray isn't a sleeper agent in canon. Which would be dope as fuck and I hope it does happen but at the same time I wanted to write my own season of Carmen Sandiego.
> 
> This takes place mostly in-between episodes of season 1, and changes existing episodes as necessary. That will be infrequent, though. I don't really enjoy having to work within rigid parameters like that so most of this fic will be heists of my own devising. Join me as we find out if I can hack it in the big leagues of international crime! An FBI watchlist will be our emerald city!

Part 1: Howl

Gray was angry as he walked out of his cell in Paris. He was angry when he got into the limo with the Cleaners. He was angry when they switched to the helicopter in Nantes and he was angry when they reached VILE Island. He shrugged off Boris’s tight grip on his shoulders and stepped out onto the helipad.

He watched the Cleaners give each other some significant look from the corner of his eye. They hadn’t spoken a word to him on the entire journey, though that wasn’t unusual for them. The two turned back to their helicopter and Gray stalked up towards the school’s entrance, mulling over his encounter with his former best friend.

Until now he’d assumed she was just playing another game, pushing the limits of what the Faculty would allow like she always did. Why else would she run away only to immediately start taunting them? Why else would she choose such an evocative name and outfit? She had to want to be found, right? No matter how much they clashed sometimes, Black Sheep wouldn’t just leave her family. She wouldn’t just leave him.

He hadn’t known what to think when he finally returned to the island a year after their fateful Morocco mishap only to find her gone without a trace.

No one would talk about her, the Faculty would freeze him out when he asked, neither confirming nor denying that anything had happened to her, and none of the current students had any idea of who she was. Gray had been distraught for weeks, coming back to the island after every mission to try and find any information about her. He stole back her matryoshka dolls from Professor Maelstrom’s office - though why they were there of all places, he couldn’t begin to guess - and kept them carefully hidden in his tool bag. He knew how much they meant to her even if he didn’t know why, and when she came back she would be glad to know he had taken good care of them.

Because of course she would come back. She had to. Where else could she go except here? He couldn’t imagine her living anywhere else, and the island felt empty without her. Each time he came back Gray couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all just a veneer, a set piece waiting for the leading lady to return. But every day that passed with no note or signs appearing from her, he inched closer to admitting what he feared most of all. That she had wheedled her way onto a mission she wasn’t prepared for and had died in some obscure city far away. That she’d been put on a team with some brainless oaf who didn’t know how to utilize her skill-set and she’d been hurt without Gray to watch out for her. These thoughts consumed his waking hours, and his dreams were plagued with her smiling face. Waking up every morning broke his heart anew until suddenly, almost overnight, everyone was talking about the elusive Carmen Sandiego.

It was said that she could get into any room, could steal the shirt off your back and leave you none the wiser, that no cell or chains could hold her and no treasure would escape her discerning eye. She always knew where VILE would strike, breezing in at the last minute to swipe whatever it was VILE wanted before any operatives could reach it. Gray immediately suspected the true identity of the super thief, and it was all but confirmed when he saw students passing around a blurry photo of a woman in red. Her face was hidden beneath her hat, but he knew that lean frame and self-assured posture. The relief he felt knowing that she was alive was almost intoxicating.

He’d felt confident, then, that this was all just another prank. It had Black Sheep written all over it. Escape an inescapable island and then steal from the biggest and best crime syndicate in the world? It was exactly what a brilliant but bored operative would do if they felt cheated out of their rightful place. Gray had gone to the Faculty with the picture, had bragged that he would find her and bring her home.

But the Faculty hadn’t wanted her to come back. Shadowsan said she was too wilful, too unruly to ever make a good operative. Coach Brunt said no one who turned their back on their family deserved a second chance. Countess Cleo said that they had their own plan for keeping her quiet, implying the Cleaners would be sent after her. He couldn’t stand by and let that happen again, still haunted by the confusion and fear in her eyes when he hadn’t made a move to help her in Casablanca. At the time he’d thought he could atone for that mistake by bringing her back into the fold. He'd begged them to let him try, saying she knew too much about VILE and may have told someone already. She was their best operative and only needed some more convincing. She was playing a game and VILE would look ridiculous if they took her threats seriously. She was all alone out there and would be grateful to come back. He used every excuse he could think of and he honestly didn't know which one ultimately convinced them. The truth of the matter was simply that he missed her terribly and he didn't think he could survive knowing he hadn't at least tried to save her. As much as he wanted to play her game, he also knew the Faculty never made empty threats.

He’d spent weeks tracking her down, figuring out where she’d strike next and designing counter-strategies for her skill-set. And he’d had fun doing it even if he always turned out to be one step behind. He’d truly believed that if he could only catch her, she would come back with him. Black Sheep may have been a prankster but she always played fair. If it had been a game, she would have conceded defeat the moment he stepped into that train car.

Except...it hadn’t been a prank. She’d been deadly serious when she said she was never coming back, and as Gray looked around at the sleek glass and marble decor of the academy some part of him wished it looked more like his heart felt. Splintered, and crumbling. He’d been so worried for so long that she’d died fighting to come back, it had never occurred to him that perhaps one day she’d simply dropped everything and walked away.

He wondered if he was a terrible person for thinking this felt worse.

He sighed. He’d been so proud of his latest plan, of the honey-baited trap he’d left for her. He’d been loath to part with the matryoshka even when he knew she was alive and well but he knew their allure over her couldn’t be wasted.

Gray had gotten onto the train in the city proper as soon as he received an alert from his security system at the private collection. Either she’d be in and out in time to slip onto the train before it left the city or she’d catch up at one of the subsequent stops. He supposed it depended on how much she wanted to play with whatever police they sent after her this time, and who could blame her for that? Gray had laughed to himself as he remembered the scene they’d created in Switzerland trying to catch her. It was so easy to get those bumbling Interpol officers chasing their own tails.

He’d watched her marker on his GPS dart around the cramped French city, then suddenly soar on a straight path towards him. She must have been using that cute little hang glider again, he really should look into getting one of those for himself. Carmen had walked right past his window as she boarded the train at a small station among the country vineyards. Her hat and coat vanished in a quick-change as easily as taking off a pair of glasses. He’d reminisced, briefly, on the class where they’d learned that move. It had been one of the rare lessons with two faculty members, Maelstrom and Cleo working together to show the students how to become a different person with a few key outfit changes and a different posture. Gray had found it to be a cinch, slipping into a new character had seemed more like a fun game than anything else. Black Sheep, however, hadn’t been very good at it at all. While it had been effortless for her to switch out her VILE polo for a new look, her clothing choices had been outlandish to say the least and she’d never quite managed to fit their assigned personas. It seemed somewhat ironic now, but at the time he’d found it charming that she was so straightforwardly herself that she refused to change even for an assignment.

She’d received poor marks that day and had been broken up over it. Tigress had scoffed at her predictability, even Chevre and Topo had rolled their eyes. But Gray had held back and as they left for their next class he’d thrown his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, her tiny figure fitting so nicely against his, and he’d half jokingly promised that when they got off the island together - always together - he’d do all the talking for them. Black Sheep hadn’t bristled at his offer of protection like she usually did, had even leaned into the comfort of his warmth to both his worry and satisfaction. So he’d upped the ante; spinning a tale of a fabulously wealthy family holding a party in their mountain villa, world renown criminals Crackle and Black Sheep sneaking in through the vast rose garden before throwing off their gardener disguises to reveal a breathtaking gown for her and a doddering old man disguise for him. She’d catch everyone’s eyes with her stunning beauty and mysterious silence, before redirecting their gaze to him faking a heart attack while she wove through the crowd to stoke the people’s concern and rob them all blind.

She’d finally laughed when he collapsed against the wall and gasped, in his most over-the-top old man voice, a last will and testament leaving all his worldly possessions to his shy trophy wife and their sixteen yappy little dogs.

Gray had smiled at the memory, making a note to remind her of it once he caught her. The train lurched into motion, then, and he’d left his cabin to meet her.

It had taken her longer to catch the train than he’d expected and he’d been feeling pretty smug, thinking the infamous Carmen Sandiego was finally slipping. But after all his careful planning she still held all the pieces. Gray could admit to feeling a little insulted that she’d seen through his strategy so easily. It had taken a long time to design a tracker that powerful yet discreet and, as Tigress repeatedly told him while he’d gone over the plan with their classmates, he’d taken a big risk by waiting for her on the train rather than tracking her down. If he’d been wrong about her escape route then he would have been too far away to even attempt to catch her. But he’d said he knew her, knew that she would get out of the city in the most anonymous way possible, not necessarily the fastest. The joy in his correct analysis paled somewhat in light of her mockery. Carmen had found his tracking sticker immediately and suddenly it felt as though she’d been the one shepherding him to the train rather than the other way around.

Gray was nothing if not adaptable, however. He could always turn a loss into something just a little shinier. He’d deflected, asking her point blank about her past. And she’d surprised him by showing her hand in full.

There were things he hadn’t known but had suspected, like her being raised on the island and never having contact with the outside world until recently. In hindsight it was really obvious.

There were things he wished he’d known and hated that she’d kept secret, like the mystery boy on her phone. And her name. Names had power in their world, there was a danger and an intimacy in using someone’s given name rather than their code name that he had wished to share with her when they were students. But no matter how many times he asked she had always kept it to herself. It was a small consolation to know that she’d never had a name to tell him, but then why hadn’t she simply told him that instead? Their work relied on secrecy but he’d always thought they had been free with each other.

There were things he didn’t want to know and wished she hadn’t revealed, like the warmth that softened her voice even now when she spoke of Coach Brunt. Her happy memories of being raised by their teachers were so at odds with the cruel dismissal he’d fought against just for the chance to find her that it made his head hurt to think about.

‘Speak of the devil…’ Gray thought to himself as he stopped outside the huge conference room doors. He combed his hair back and took a deep breath, shuffling his muddy thoughts away so he could put on his laid back face for the Faculty. Just as he went to knock on the door, Dr. Bellum and Professor Maelstrom came around a corner of the hallway. Their quiet conversation withering to silence as they took in the scene before them.

Then Maelstrom smiled, and Gray knew his day was about to go from bad to worse. When Professor Maelstrom was happy it invariably preceded someone getting a nasty surprise.

The Professor practically purred, “Crackle. Just the operative I wanted to see.”

Gray slapped on a crooked grin. “Professor! Running a bit late, eh? I was just about to go in for my next briefing. Shall I get the door for you?”

The old man’s face soured and one of his eyebrows raised to level a judgmental look at Gray. Dr. Bellum spoke instead. “My dear boy, we always arrive precisely when we mean to. Early and late mean nothing when you’re the one holding the room.” Her reproving words were blunted by her eternal manic grin.

Gray laughed a little nervously as he opened the door and ushered them through. Without the fog of betrayal clouding his mind, he was beginning to realize that all of this was alarmingly out of the ordinary. Normally he would be given his next assignment immediately after completing or escaping the previous one, before he’d even left the country. To have been forcibly brought back to the island was strange on it’s own but seeing Maelstrom’s greasy smile sent warnings pinging through his nerves. He took a snapshot overview of the situation and, doing a few quick calculations on the current mood of the room and the memory of the Cleaner’s rough hands gripping tightly to his shoulders, Gray found he really didn’t like the way the odds were stacking against him.

The doors shut behind him with a softly echoing boom. He waited on the floor as Bellum and Maelstrom climbed the stairs and took their seats at the table, Bellum immediately pulling several screens and keyboards out from her chair. Shadowsan had been waiting off to the side. He gave Gray a searching look as he passed him on his way up, familiar only in it’s indecipherable nature. Once everyone was settled and they’d left him to squirm in silence for long enough, Countess Cleo spoke.

“Tell me, Crackle. How do you think you performed on your most recent assignment.”

Gray felt sweat begin to bead at his temples. “Well I...suppose it could have gone better. But it could have easily gone much worse too! I was right about the train thing, even managed to corner Ol’ Red before she gave me the slip. I’m sure I’ll catch her next time!”

The Countess only stared at him, unimpressed.

Coach Brunt snorted a derisive laugh, “I heard you barely lasted a minute once the fighting started. You still think you can bring her in? Ha! I always had you pegged for a moron but I never guessed it ran so deep.”

Gray knew he should take offense to that, but the fear slowly turning his insides to lead was far more distracting. The Faculty were often callous with their students. Insulting and downright cruel when they felt it necessary, but this was different. Gray knew immediately that he was being taken off the mission for his repeated failure to bring in Carmen Sandiego, had dreaded this possibility since his first failed attempt. He’d been afraid, then, of who they would send in his place. Maybe that weirdo Neal the Eel or, god forbid, the psychotic Paper Star. But his fears had never taken into consideration what punishment he might face for his blunders. That oversight felt horrifyingly naive now.

His eyes darted to Dr. Bellum’s seat near the middle of the table, her oft repeated words running through his head. He let out a laugh that managed to sound slightly more confident than he felt. Fighting the urge to fidget, Gray turned a plea to his favorite teacher “Oof, that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? What happened to ‘failure is always an option?’ Doctor?”

Bellum barely glanced up from her screens to give him a vague wave of her hand, dismissing him like he was nothing more than a passing fly in the workshop. Gray gulped and knew the ever-watchful eyes of the Countess caught the motion of his throat.

Professor Maelstrom stood to bring attention back to himself. “Failure is tolerable, young mister Crackle,” he intoned, “but capture is not. Operatives have been terminated for far lesser mistakes than the one you made in Paris.”

The wording was intentionally business-like and mild, but Gray had no trouble discerning the truth of the statement. After all, no one ever left VILE. That's why he was in this situation at all, wasn’t it? The only way out was death, either in service to them or by their hand. His leaden guts turned to ice and he couldn’t resist the urge to take a step back. The cold amusement that glittered, cat-like, in Countess Cleo’s eyes had his muscles tensing against another.

The Professor continued, “The only reason you were removed from that cell rather than left bleeding out on the floor is because you remain rather uniquely qualified to assist in the problem of our wayward student.”

Coach Brunt cut in, “Don’t think that this doesn’t change anything. You may have been a bloodhound before but you ain’t nothing but bait now.”

Gray certainly had the feeling of being impaled on a hook and cast out to sea. He knew anything he said now would be easily turned against him, and he bit his tongue until he tasted blood to keep himself from opening his mouth.

From the end of the table, Shadowsan rose in the brittle silence. The only sound came from the whisper of fabric as he pulled Gray’s crackle-rod from his haori sleeve. Gray cursed, inwardly. Maybe he was losing his touch, if he hadn’t even felt the man take his beloved weapon from him.

Shadowsan slid the tool across the table to Dr. Bellum. She took it mindlessly with one hand as the other continued typing away, only pausing to look at it with a wide grin of recognition before stashing it away in one of her coat’s many pockets.

He waited another moment, staring Gray down with a tight look of disapproval before finally breaking the silence. “Since you have failed in your primary goals as an operative, you will submit yourself to remedial classes.”

“What?!” Gray blurted in indignation. He’d already bloody graduated! He couldn’t be held back now!

Shadowsan kept talking as though he hadn’t said anything, “You will remain on the island until it is determined that you can be trusted on missions again. You will not rejoin the current students, but instead will be tutored privately with us.”

Brunt butted in with a bloodthirsty grin, “That’ll be psych evals with Maelstrom, stealth kindergarten with Shadowsan, and boot camp with me. I hope you’re ready for a boatload of bruises pretty-boy, because I don’t plan on going easy on you.”

Cleo rolled her eyes at Brunt’s theatrics, but continued herself, “You will assist Dr. Bellum in the laboratories however she decides you will be most useful. For my part, I will simply be monitoring your progress.”

Gray strongly doubted that was all the Countess would be doing. But before he could figure out her angle or decide if it was worth it to put words to his protests, Professor Maelstrom spoke again.

“Know this, Crackle. You are only alive now because of your history with Carmen Sandiego. You know her strengths and weaknesses and with your retraining, you will be expected to exploit them mercilessly. If you muck this up again, you will be disposed of without a second thought. You may be the easiest way to bring Sandiego in, but you are far from our only option. Have we made ourselves clear?”

Standing alone beneath the dispassionate gazes of his teachers, Gray could do nothing except accept. Not trusting himself to speak, he gave a sharp nod of his head and spun on his heel towards the door.

Just as he reached it, however, Dr. Bellum spoke for the first time since entering the conference room. “Oh, and Crackle? Meet me in my lab in thirty minutes. I have a few things I want to show you once I’m finished here.”

His fingers tightened on the door handle, one more cold shiver trailing down his spine.

“Yes, Doctor Bellum.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, curious. Any guesses on what Dr. Bellum wants to show him?


	2. 2019, Vanilla Vexation in Madagascar

Part 1.2: Howl

Carmen made sure to greet people as she skirted the edge of the small town. While her desire to get to know them at least a little was genuine, the plausible deniability it would give her was the true goal. If she was seen here being friendly, she was unlikely to be immediately linked to anything suspicious that happened elsewhere.

Not that she was really planning on being suspicious today. But in her experience, it was always better to be prepared.

A few cars trundled down the muddy road, the drivers honking greetings at each other and calling out to the other people walking. Just as she passed some children playing in an empty lot, a worn-out soccer ball came flying towards her. She jumped to stop it’s airborne path with her knee, holding it under her foot before it rolled into the street. Carmen smiled at the children who watched her expectantly. She kicked the ball up and bounced it off her shin, showing off a few tricks before sending it back. She waved off their excited attention and kept walking as Player’s voice sparked to life in her ear. “Hey Red, spot any lemurs yet?”

“None so far, but I’m hopeful. Considering they inhabit every niche of the island’s ecosystems, I’d be surprised if I didn’t see any.”

“No kidding! There’s nearly one hundred different species of lemur on Madagascar, ranging in size from the one ounce mouse lemur to the twenty pound babakoto. Though fossil evidence suggests that there was once a lemur as big as a gorilla! Imagine seeing that running out of the forest.”

“And speaking for forests...” Carmen checked her GPS for her location, double checked that Zack and Ivy’s markers were where they were supposed to be, and triple checked that no one was paying attention before darting down an alleyway. She hopped the fence at the end in one smooth movement before disappearing into the surrounding rainforest. “...Did you know the famous baobab trees of Madagascar are often called ‘upside down trees’ because of their peculiar way of growing? The enormous trunks grow straight and smooth with short, twisted branches that look like roots at the very top.”

“I did know that. But did you know that baobab trees aren’t actually exclusive to Madagascar? Those are the most famous ones, but they’re also found in Africa and Australia.”

Carmen laughed, “Alright, I didn’t know that one. You win this round.” She rolled her eyes fondly at the distinctive sound of a tally mark being drawn on a notebook. 

“Since everything looks good on your end, I’ll check in with Zack and Ivy. They’ll meet you on the other side of the farm once they're done surveying.” Carmen gave a humm of agreement and the soft buzz in her ear stopped as the other end of the communication cut off.

After drying off from their excitement in Ecuador, Player had decrypted plans for a heist about to be pulled on a vanilla farm in Madagascar. The drive hadn’t gone much into specifics, as per usual, but it had connected several files from Dr. Bellum about factories making artificial vanilla from petroleum. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out VILE’s plan; steal the high quality beans to sell at jacked up prices and flood the market with the cheap imitation stuff to drown out competitors. VILE gets to corner the entire market and the Malagasy farmers get nothing for their hard work.

Team Red had booked their flights the next day. They’d spent the last few days observing the town nearby VILE’s target farm. Learning who was connected to whom and where gossipers tended to linger. They hadn’t known when exactly VILE would show their face and had been waiting on pins and needles for any change in the slow pace of the town.

That morning Carmen had overheard a man talking excitedly about a potential buyer for his vanilla crop while eating breakfast in a small cafe. The buyer was supposedly very wealthy, and would be in talks with the head of the farm coalition all day today. The conversation then shifted towards the nitty-gritty of vanilla farming so Carmen had slipped out and wandered over to another eatery she knew the farmers frequented. She’d been stuck at that one for a while before she got any useful information, picking at a selection of tropical fruits and pretending to be absorbed in work on her laptop.

Finally, two hours later, a couple of women had come in talking about the french man who had shown up to the farm a little while ago and would be there all afternoon. He’d been tall, dark skinned, and aloof. Kind, though only insofar as he hadn’t been actively cruel. She got the feeling they didn’t like him very much but didn't want to be rude and if that wasn’t Le Chevre all over, she’d eat her hat. He must be posing as the buyer.

Interestingly, they’d said he had arrived with his much friendlier driver, his awful female bodyguard, and someone they only referred to as his acquaintance who had left before the negotiations began. The acquaintance, supposedly, was a charming Australian man with a quick laugh and a lopsided grin.

Well. No question who that was.

Carmen had sent a few quick messages to Player. The first apologizing for waking him up at what would be around six in the morning in Toronto, the second admonishing in case he was still awake from the day before, and the third informing him that all four of their VILE rivals were present this time around. This job hadn’t seemed complex enough to warrant more than two operatives at most, their plans would need to be changed. Fast. She and the siblings had explored the farm somewhat during their stake-out days but now that they knew which pieces VILE had placed on the board, they would need to do some more reconnaissance. She’d pocketed the last couple fruits for Zack and thanked the man at the counter on her way out before taking a circuitous route to the edge of town.

The rainforest that surrounded the city was thick and dark beneath the swaying canopy, the undergrowth prickly with wild pineapple plants and treacherous from streams that carved sharp little canyons in the sandy mud. Carmen picked her way through carefully, quietly.

Taking the road would have been too obvious, it was a long street that left town and looped around the heavily forested area that she now cut through. There were no hiding spots besides the woods anyway, and she didn’t want anyone passing by to alert the farmers of a suspicious woman in red making her way towards them.

As she neared her mark on her GPS, Carmen looked around for cover that would allow her to get as close as possible without being seen. A huge tree grew near the edge of the road across from the farm, it had large branches that could easily hold her weight and the dense foliage would break up any part of her silhouette that didn’t fit behind the moss mottled trunk. She climbed the ramp of a fallen tree farther back, waiting for a car to drive past that would disguise the sound of her jumping onto her intended lookout spot and settling in.

She pulled her coat tight around her, peering down through the leaves at the pair of VILE operatives sweating in their business casuals. Tigress paced in front of the closed gates while Gray leaned against them and watched her with an annoyed frown. 

Tigress positively steamed in anger, abruptly halting her back and forth to face Gray with a frustrated exclamation. “I just don’t see why they needed to send all of us! My next job was supposed to be in Naples until I got called back for this grade school caper. Naples, Crackle. That’s in Italy! I should be relaxing on a beautiful beach right now, not stuck in this muddy backwater!”

“Yeah I know where Naples is located.” Gray snarked. The familiar twang of his voice made Carmen instinctively lean closer, some part of her still unwilling to believe he was her enemy. It had been a long time since she’d seen him, nearly a year since she’d left him on that train. He continued. “Playing coy isn’t a good look for you, Tigress. We both know why you were brought along.”

“I’m not playing coy.” Tigress hissed, eyes narrowed dangerously.

Gray bared his teeth in a mean grin that Carmen hadn’t seen since his first day at VILE. “No? I guess you’re just a total moron, then. Everyone else seems to be on the same page.”

Tigress let out a screech, stepping forward with her hands up as though she would attack him right there on the street. Carmen suspected she only stopped because a car drove past at that exact moment. Rule number one of VILE, no witnesses.

Gray didn’t move except to widen his awful smile. Carmen could see him roll his shoulders slightly in preparation to fight, almost like he was looking forward to the prospect. But Tigress only huffed and turned away again, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “You’re insufferable these days, you know that? What happened to you was your own stupid fault. Don’t take it out on me.”

Carmen watched her ex-friend closely for his reaction. He was behaving so differently now than what she remembered of him. When she heard what the women had said in the cafe she’d assumed he would be the same as when she last saw him in Poitiers, the same as when they’d been best friends before that. The Gray she knew would have happily let Tigress’s snobbery roll over him like water off a duck's back. But where her Gray would have playfully teased, this Gray was aiming to hurt with every retort. He and Tigress snapped at each other while Carmen’s thoughts drifted.

In retrospect, it hadn’t been a very good-spirited prank to leave him on the train unconscious the way she had done. To be fair though, she had known he could lose that funny Devineaux guy easily. The man wasn’t exactly France’s finest. Player even confirmed that Gray had escaped Paris Interpol the very next day. So where in the world had he been this whole time? 

In her better moments she liked to think he’d listened to her and abandoned VILE. That he was living a quiet life somewhere far away. She tried not to be hurt by the thought that if he had left VILE then apparently he had left her too, since he’d never tried to contact her. ‘It would be enough’, she’d made herself think, ‘if he was happy, and not hurting anyone’.

When she wasn’t feeling quite so generous, she thought maybe he’d become a much better criminal without her around to hold him back. That he was out stealing and murdering the whole time but was too good to be on anyone’s watch-lists. It wasn’t improbable to think someone with his talents might be snatched up by one of VILE’s more underground operations.

Except here he was now, bickering with Tigress about past jobs and not particularly being a very good secret agent at all. So what did that mean about his year away? Why had he disappeared for so long? And why was he so different now? Irritable and bitter where he had always been friendly bordering on flirtatious before. What did Tigress mean by ‘what happened to him’? Her words implied a specific incident, had he been injured shortly after Poitiers? Had he only just finished recuperating now?

Carmen didn’t know. And she really didn’t have time to be thinking about all that at the moment. She tried to box up those thoughts for later, but they were loud and insistent. It was only due to her height advantage that she noticed the child walking up the street just before the two VILE operatives did. 

She cursed under her breath. If she’d been paying more attention she probably could have redirected the little girl first. With Le Chevre still inside, Gray and Tigress weren’t in a position to hurt her. But Carmen still preferred to keep interactions between Tigress and the general public to a minimum, especially when it came to children. And not to mention, she had no idea how this new Gray would react. Could he have changed so much in a year that she would now need to protect even children from him? She didn’t think so, but was it worth it to let a child wander into danger just to find out?

Carmen reached into her coat pocket, fingertips resting on the mangosteens she’d saved from breakfast in case she needed to toss them into the brush as a distraction. She really didn’t want to do that, putting the VILE operatives on guard could escalate the situation from potential hostility to real violence if she wasn’t careful. It would also completely eliminate any chance of surprising them later on, jeopardizing her entire mission. She might even get captured if she wasn’t able to grab the kid in time and run.

She wouldn’t hesitate to do it, though, if it looked like the situation was going south.

The girl drew closer. She couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old. She wasn’t wearing a uniform of any kind but it was around the time of day when a primary school would get out. Carmen wondered if her parents worked on the farm and if the girl usually stopped by after school. She wondered if they were happy to see her every day. If they walked home together, hand in hand. A familiar longing tugged at her heart. Her fingers tightened on the fruit in her pocket.

Tigress made a face when the little girl peeked around the tall shrubs that lined the fence. Gray laughed when the girl mimicked it back at her. He kicked off the gate with a rattling clang of iron, mozying over to where the child still partially hid behind the bush. He kneeled down in front of her, his hands loose and obviously empty where they flopped over his knee. The words he spoke were too quiet for Carmen to hear, but he pointed down the road and away from the farm. The girl shook her head and stomped her foot, pointing at the gate angrily.

Tigress laughed at that, and came over to lean heavily on Gray’s shoulder. “Look kid, no brats allowed. The adults are talking in there.”

The girl was visibly upset now. Gray slapped at Tigress’s wrist until she let go and wandered back with a bored “Ugh. Whatever.”

Gray smiled at the kid again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of snap-pops. Presumably he had brought them to throw as emergency distractions - Carmen herself always carried a handful of international coins for the same reason - but Carmen supposed child bribery was as good a use as any. He opened the box and threw one of the little paper twists down on the hard-packed dirt road where it flashed a little and burst with a loud CRACK. The girl clapped, delighted, and reached for the box. Gray stood up quickly and held it up out of her reach. 

“Ah ah! If you want the rest of them, you gotta promise you’ll go straight home and stay there. If I hear that you went anywhere else, I’ll send my scary friend after you!” He stuck his thumb over his shoulder to Tigress, who obliged by letting her claws out with a metallic snick. Carmen wondered, vaguely, if she ever took those stupid gloves off.

The young girl deliberated, looking between the gate and the box in Gray’s hand for several minutes. Carmen could see Tigress growing impatient but Gray held his easy smile, giving the box a tantalizing shake every so often.

Finally, the girl looked back at him and nodded seriously, sticking out a hand as though they’d completed a tough business deal. Gray laughed and shook it firmly, handing her the box over their clasped hands. The little girl grinned and skipped off down the road, no doubt excited to show off her new toys to her friends.

Carmen let go of the breath she’d been holding, and of her bruising grip on the fruit. It had felt deeply wrong to speculate whether or not Gray would hurt a child, coldly rational in a way that reminded her too much of Professor Maelstrom’s psychoanalytic classes. She was thankful Gray’s warmth hadn’t disappeared entirely. No matter what apparently happened to make him so otherwise testy.

Gray stood on the road watching the child leave with a faint smile on his face until Tigress scoffed from where she now leaned against the gate. “We should have just scared the little urchin away. Now she’ll tell all her friends and I’m going to be stuck watching you give away all our tools to their pathetic puppy eyes.”

His ticked-off expression returned like a window slamming shut. He joined his teammate at the fence. “Ah, shut up. No harm in giving a child some little firecrackers if it keeps them out of the way. It’s not like those were essential to the plan.”

Tigress groaned, “You’ve been doing stuff like this all day though!”

“So, what? I should immediately attack any child that wanders near us? You’re right, that’s a much better plan for staying under the radar.”

“It’s not just the kid, Crackle!” Tigress ground out, “Remember that guy earlier who wanted to follow us out, so instead of just giving him the slip like a normal person you decided to take him to a bar and buy him a drink before sneaking away? What the hell was that?! Your year in time-out made you so boring. And soft, yuck! You do know that Fedora the Explora isn’t going to sleep with you just because you refuse to have a little fun, right? You can stop trying to impress her.”

Carmen felt her heart drop into her stomach. Her face flushed hot. She thanked whatever god might be passing by that her radio wasn’t active at the moment, and dearly hoped that Player wasn’t listening in anyway. It was mortifying to be held up as some reward for good behavior, and she hated that she couldn’t be sure if Gray would have said anything to put that idea into Tigress’s head. She didn’t think so. She didn’t want to think so. He never would have been so callous and vulgar before. No, this had to be Tigress scrambling to regain dominance by jabbing at any sore spots she could think of.

On the ground, Gray’s temper went from annoyed to furious like a switch had been flipped in his head. He whirled around to face his partner and for a moment there was only taut silence as he glared fiercely at Tigress who, for her part, quickly realized she had made a mistake. But in typical Tigress fashion, she refused to back down and instead held his scowl with one of her own. 

Gray’s shift into a fighting stance was a subtle change from his usual posture, but Carmen knew what to look for. His shoulders relaxed and his knees bent slightly, evenly distributing his weight. She knew from months of training with him that though his heels didn’t appear to move, he had risen a tiny increment to perch on the balls of his feet. Ready for any move Tigress could make against him. Carmen could see the glint of a concealed blade sitting just under his shirt cuff. Tigress’s claws nearly punctured the sleeves of her suit jacket where her arms were crossed. Her feet turned out at the toes to give her an ever so slightly wider pose for stability. They stood perfectly still, sizing each other up like boxers in a ring.

Ultimately it was Gray who broke the stalemate. One half of his mouth twitched up into a cruel smirk. “I know this might be hard for you of all people to understand, but sometimes people do things for reasons that don’t involve trying to get into someone’s pants.”

Tigress turned tomato-red and shrieked in wordless anger before stalking away. Gray settled back against the gate and watched her go with a look of stubborn resentment on his face, content to let her fume on her own instead of trying to smooth things over as he would have done a year ago.

Carmen tapped her comm-link to activate it as Tigress neared the corner of the fence. She spoke softly, “Bogey coming your way, Ivy. Are you and Zack done over there?

“All packed up and ready to go.” The other girl’s words were a sorely needed comfort, “Red Drone got a full map of the orchards for Player to take a look at and we confirmed Mole Man and Goat Boy are inside. Gotta say though, it’s not exactly state of the art security in there. Are you sure there’s really all four stooges working this one?”

“Positive. I’ve got eyes on Tigress and Gray out here.”

“Huh. Maybe there’s something else going on that the drive didn’t mention?”

“That’s a good theory. We’ll just have to keep our options open.” Carmen could hear Zack complaining about something in the background. She smiled, “I’ll meet you guys back at the hotel in a little bit, we can try to work out VILE’s plan before we have to come back for the main event.”

“You got it boss.”

The line went silent and Carmen let go of the earpiece. She knew she needed to leave soon, but she took a moment to look back at the lonely figure at the gate. She wondered, again, where he had been for the past year. If he’d been safe, if he’d been happy. If he’d thought about her even half as much as she’d thought about him.

Gray had his eyes closed and his head tipped back to feel the warm afternoon sun. The golden light illuminated his angular features, gleaming off the rich brown of his hair. Now that she got a good look at him she could see the bags under his eyes. She hoped he was getting enough sleep. She leaned a little further to look for other signs of illness or injury, shifting her leg to a lower branch to maintain her balance.

A twig snapped beneath her foot. His eyes opened, and he looked directly at her.

Carmen gasped and spun back, sitting with her back against the tree and huddling as small as possible. She closed her eyes to concentrate on listening for any sign of movement. She’d still been hidden among the leaves, and with the sun behind her, logically he shouldn’t have been able to see very far into the trees. Even so, she was glad Tigress had already left.

Several minutes passed with only the buzzing and chirping of the forest. Then, the clattering sound of a body falling back against an iron gate that sat loose in its hinges. Carmen peeked over her shoulder to see him with his hands crossed over his chest, muttering to himself as he kicked at a rock half buried in the dirt. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the forest, jumping slightly when she was immediately confronted by a large, reddish-brown lemur staring at her from a nearby branch. Its golden eyes watched her curiously, tail flicking back and forth where it hung down near her arm.

She frowned, embarrassed, and grumbled “What are you looking at?” before rolling up onto her toes and dashing away through the treetops.

\-----------------------------------------------

The dark jungle loomed on either side of the truck that Team Red had ‘borrowed’ from town. Carmen sat in the open bed, one hand held her hair down against her chest, the other kept her hat safely pinned to the metal floor. While it had been hot in the day, she was glad for her coat now that the chill of night had set in. Zack and Ivy bickered in the cabin of the truck, but the rainforest was far louder at night than it had been during the day and she couldn’t make out any distinct words.

Their plan was simple. Almost negligently so, in her opinion. Because they couldn’t be sure how or why Team VILE was going to split up, Carmen would handle whoever went into the warehouse for the beans and the twins would hold off whoever was outside. It was a safe bet that Gray would be inside since his specific skill set couldn’t be utilized here and he was the best of the bunch at lock-picking. From there, though, Carmen was having a hard time guessing who would go where. Le Chevre and Tigress were good at lock-picking, but they were both too impatient for low-tech jobs like this one. Le Chevre got jumpy if he went too long without a lookout and Tigress vastly preferred smashing safes to cracking them. El Topo had the necessary composure but wasn’t as technically skilled, she was pretty sure he would be outside but if the other three got arguing he might have volunteered.

El Topo and Le Chevre always wanted to be paired together. ‘The better to send each other kissy faces’. Carmen thought to herself with a suppressed giggle. They weren’t especially skilled in the field but together they had a lot of bases covered and could be difficult to beat if given advantageous terrain. Tigress and Gray used to work well together, Gray being just about the only person who could put up with the volatile blonde for any length of time. With them butting heads to the point of violence now though, things could be a whole lot worse than ever before. Having the two most physically skilled operatives already high-strung and out for blood didn’t bode well for Carmen’s little team.

Carmen twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers, agitated by the lack of information available. She took a deep breath. The cool, damp air smelled strongly of vegetation and night-blooming flowers. It reminded her too much of VILE Island to be fully comforting.

She made herself stop and think things through. The worst case scenario, she supposed, would be Tigress and El Topo inside the warehouse with Gray and Le Chevre outside. El Topo was neither fast nor vicious but in an enclosed area like the one she was headed into, his size and strength would be formidable obstacles. And while Carmen knew she could beat Tigress in a fair fight, Tigress always took every opportunity to ensure matches were rigged in her favor. Tonight would be no different, no matter where she was.

Ivy and Zack could beat Le Chevre, had already done so several times, but even Carmen struggled to win fights against Gray when he really meant business and she wasn’t confident they could outsmart him on the fly. Gray may not have been the strongest opponent physically, but he was by far the most versatile of the VILE graduates. Everywhere that Tigress was impatient and forceful, Gray was creative and calculating. He always had several contingency plans available to swap in and out as the mission unfolded, building his schemes in a modular style unlike any of the others. It was difficult to fight against someone who always seemed so prepared, but his pride was a glaring weakness that Carmen was happy to exploit.

Before Poitiers, Gray hadn’t been much of a problem. He had rarely teamed up when confronting them and Carmen had always been able to face him herself. Or, when she was especially on top of her game, she could avoid encountering him entirely. She’d had mixed feelings on those missions. On the one hand, it was satisfying beyond belief to beat him at his own games. To imagine him spending hours detailing a plot only for Carmen to slice through it easily and save the day. On the other hand, she loved seeing his dumb, grumpy expressions when she revealed that she’d come out on top yet again.

It was hard not to mentally reorganize his plans after the fact, not to imagine what she would have done differently and what he might say if she pointed out his mistakes. She missed getting to rub it in his face when she found a flaw in his plans, and even more than that she missed being able to go over the plans again and again to make them perfect. Leaving behind the teasing and getting lost with him in the dazzling world where heists didn’t hurt anyone and capers were only that, intricate puzzles to solve solely for the sake of mischief.

But that wasn’t the world they lived in. And reminiscing wasn’t going to conjure it into existence. Carmen imagined grabbing her brain and forcing it back on track. 

Worst case scenario. Right. 

The worst case scenario was her teammates being defeated outside while she lost the loot and was captured. Ultimately being taken back to VILE Island to face the music for her actions against the Faculty. The most likely path to that end was Tigress and El Topo waiting for her inside the warehouse and Le Chevre and Gray working together to hurt or even kill Ivy and Zack outside.

There wasn’t really anything close to a best case scenario.

The truck rumbled past the gate where Carmen had been spying earlier. She jumped out silently and watched the tail lights drive on, leaving her alone in the darkness. Zack would park the truck further down the road and the siblings would come back by foot to avoid suspicion. But for now Carmen hopped over the fence and ran for cover behind a tool shed. She crouched silently in the deep shadow, listening for a sign that she had been spotted. Not hearing any footfalls or angry voices, Carmen peeked around the wall of the shed.

She switched her comm-link to fully ON rather than intermittent, “Looks like we’re a little early, the warehouse is still locked and guarded. I’m going to check the west orchard. Player, can you take Red Drone and check the east?”

“You got it, Red. Come on little buddy!”

Carmen pulled the drone out of her bag and tossed it into the air before it could get it’s propellers stuck in the fabric. She watched it’s blinking lights shrink into the distance until they were indistinguishable from the stars in the sky.

Zack’s voice buzzed in her ear, “Car’s parked and we’re on our way back. Do you think there’s any chance that VILE gave up and we can go back to the hotel? I just remembered I left a perfectly good bowl of curry on the table.”

Carmen darted from shadow to shadow until she was under the cover of trees once again. “I haven’t seen anyone yet, so let’s put that option at a solid two percent possibility.”

“Eh. I’ve won with worse odds. Curry, here I come!”

The wooded area between the orchards and the processing warehouse was fairly narrow but just as dense as the forest outside. Carmen had to slow down considerably in order to stay quiet.

“No one in the east orchard. Or at least, no one who’s not supposed to be there.” Player’s voice again. Carmen stopped before she reached the edge of the trees and looked around the orchard. It was difficult to tell what was going on even with the light from the full moon overhead. The trees that the vanilla vines grew on were bushy themselves, and the vines strung up and around them hindered her attempts to look all the way through the grid of trees. 

Still, Carmen could count five guards patrolling the rows with their flashlights. The men spoke to each other occasionally, so there was no way the VILE operatives were impersonating one of them. The orchard was nestled in a cul-de-sac of cleared forest, with a road to Carmen’s left leading back to the warehouse and dense woods all around the other sides. She looked around carefully, not seeing anything until two tiny green lights suddenly lit up in the trees to her right, at the far end of the orchard. Carmen ducked down immediately and made her way closer. The lights weren’t bright, but they glinted off of pale hair and metal claws. She spoke just above a whisper, “They’re here, it’s Tigress and El Topo.”

Ivy muttered back, “We’re almost there. You should go back to the warehouse before you miss the other two.”

Zack piped up with confidence, “No worries Carm, we’ve fought them before. Those two are easy-peasy!”

Carmen made a hesitant noise and Ivy hurried to reassure her. “We’ll be careful. Now go!”

Carmen frowned as she began to wade back through the brush. Some things still weren’t adding up. Why bother stealing something that grew back every year? What could VILE want with the orchard? There were plenty of nearly ripe beans growing there, hence the guards, but from the cursory research she’d done on vanilla farming she knew it took months of near constant attention to get them to a usable state. It didn’t fit with VILE’s usual tactic to steal unfinished products, especially when it came to something so agricultural and labor intensive. It was possible that Dr. Bellum wanted to experiment on the unprocessed beans, but surely there were less risky ways to obtain those than stealing them from heavily guarded fields.

Carmen had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she was missing something important.

She turned around just in time to see Tigress step out of the trees, bathed in moonlight and in full sight of all the guards.

“No, no, no, no…!” Carmen crashed back through the undergrowth and burst into the orchard as Tigress began her assault on the startled guards. She ran as fast as she could but Tigress had a head start and had begun slashing at one of them. El Topo had already vanished underground.

Carmen skidded to a stop over the prone form of the first guard, having arrived after Tigress had moved on to her next victim. He was bleeding from multiple places, both his arms and his chest at the very least. She checked for a pulse, weak but still present. The man’s shirt was already shredded so Carmen tore off a ragged strip and made a makeshift bandage for the deepest cut on his arm. Her hands were shaking. The flesh was cut down to the bone.

She slowly became aware of her teammates’ clamoring in her ear, demanding to know what was happening. What could she say? Did she even have time to explain this?

One of the guards screamed as he was pulled into a tunnel under the trees. Several of the trees began to tip sideways, the sound of roots tearing seemed almost as loud as the cries of panic.

The final piece of the puzzle clicked in her mind. “They’re destroying the orchard. Tigress is attacking the guards and El Topo is knocking down the trees.” Her voice sounded so small in comparison to the destruction, “Zack, Ivy, I need you guys to stop El Topo ASAP. I’ll take care of Tigress and then I’ll go back for the warehouse.”

If either of them replied, Carmen didn’t hear it. She ran through the orchard towards the nearest sounds of a scuffle. A gun went off somewhere to her left.

Carmen leapt over a fallen tree and crashed into Tigress, knocking them both down. The guard she had been fighting shone his flashlight into both their eyes, blinding them as he tried to figure out if the new arrival was on his side or not. The hand not holding the light brandished a machete that wavered between the two of them.

“Ugh, will you put that thing away?!” Tigress pushed back her night vision goggles to give the man a proper sneer. She made a show of lifting her hand to block the bright light, then shot her heeled foot out to jab him in the shin while he was distracted. The man buckled, dropping the flashlight to the ground. Carmen thought about using it to blind Tigress again, but she knew that relying on the light in the darkness would only weaken her in the long run. She kicked it away and scrambled to her feet, blinking to hurry her eyes into accommodating the dark.

The guard was already back on his feet by the time she could see, still shaky and unsure. Tigress stood up slowly, gracefully, and took a moment to brush the dirt off her suit. “Well well well, look who decided to come out and play. The crimson idiot herself.”

The thought of exchanging light-hearted banter not fifty feet from a man who very well might be dead by Tigress’s hands seemed, to put it mildly, disrespectful to the point of blasphemy. Carmen didn’t respond to the taunt, only brought her fists up to eye level. Ready for a fight. 

Tigress sighed, disappointed and bored. Carmen lunged forward, only to suddenly twist and step back as the guard misinterpreted her attack and struck out with his knife.

Tigress burst out laughing, breaking her aloof persona. “Ha! Even your little charges don’t want you around! You might as well just leave now, you’ll be saving us all a lot of time.”

Carmen grabbed the hilt of the knife and twisted it backwards, forcing the man to release it. She tossed it away, spinning him around and giving him a push with a terse “Run!”

The man stumbled and looked back, confused. Tigress groaned in annoyance, sounding like she was seconds from throwing a tantrum. She quickly sidestepped, grabbed the back of the guard’s head, and smashed his face into the nearest tree. His forehead split open on impact, her claws leaving deep slashes across his scalp and neck. The man dropped to the floor, motionless.

Tigress smirked wide and oily. “Oh, did you forget already? You always did have trouble with this rule.” The smile disappeared and a look of serious anger came over her face, “No witnesses.”

Carmen kept watching the man though she knew she should be focused on her fight. She willed his chest to rise, and told herself it was because it was dark and she simply couldn’t see very well when it didn’t.

Tigress took a swipe at her while she was distracted. Carmen dodged, feeling a breeze across her face as the sharp claws barely missed. She brought her hands back up to their guard position and ducked under Tigress’s next strike, throwing a punch of her own as she was forced to retreat down the orchard row.

Tigress’s claws tore through the vines on either side of her as they fought. Carmen managed to land a kick to her side but got a vicious scratch across her leg that immediately began oozing blood. A favorite lesson from Coach Brunt rolled across the back of her mind. It was easy to track blood on both the victim and the assailant, so operatives were encouraged to use other methods of taking people out when it became necessary. Carmen had taken to that lesson quickly, and so had Tigress, as she recalled. Carmen remembered her making some quip about cats preferring to stay clean. 

Tigress wasn’t very clean now. Her black suit didn’t show how much blood was really on her, but a long splatter across her front obscured a few of the stripes on her suit and starkly contrasted the pale skin of her jaw. As much as Carmen joked that the other woman was totally unhinged, she was usually far more in control than this.

Carmen wondered, as she caught Tigress’s wrist and shouldered her away, if perhaps something besides her natural misanthropy could explain this uncharacteristic violence. Could she still be mad about what happened with Gray earlier? The interaction had seemed mild enough despite the tense ending, but Carmen must have been missing a lot of context if it resulted in this brutal display.

Tigress threw a punch that went a little wide, her guard down as she tried to counterbalance. Carmen rushed in to land a hard uppercut to the other woman’s jaw. Tigress flailed as she nearly lost her balance. She spat out a bit of blood and snarled.

The guard with the gun burst through the trees and held it up to Tigress, yelling that he would shoot if she tried anything. Tigress snatched the weapon from his hands with barely a glance and whipped him across the face with it, knocking the man out cold.

“Okay what is your problem?!” Carmen demanded, steering their fight away from the newest body, “Even you have to recognize that this is going too far. What did these people do to you that they deserve this?!”

Tigress scoffed. “It’s nothing they did, you dunce.” She surged forward and nearly caught Carmen with am open-handed slap. Carmen raised her arm to block it in time but felt Tigress’s claws shred through her coat and suit to cut the skin beneath.

“Okay, what did I do to piss you off so much that you’re taking it out on them?” Carmen grabbed Tigress’s shoulder before she could pull away, kneeing her sharply in the ribs and trying to knock her over. Tigress dodged but stayed close, one hand catching Carmen by the throat while the other locked her arm in place by her shoulder. 

Tigress looked her dead on, her eyes hard with hatred. “If you even have to ask that then you’re dumber than I thought.” 

Carmen felt the tips of the clawed gloves dig into her neck. They were wet, and she tried not to think about it. She quickly raised her free hand high in the air to stab her elbow down onto Tigress’s wrist. Tigress faltered, her grip loosening enough for Carmen to jerk out of the tight grip. She wrapped her arm in front of her face, striking sideways at Tigress’s exposed neck with her elbow again before breaking free completely.

Carmen turned and ran through the rows of trees, watching to make sure Tigress was following her and that she wasn’t going to encounter any more guards. She turned a corner and felt the dirt begin to crumble under her feet, one of El Topo’s tunnels. Carmen spoke intently into her comm-link, “Ivy! Zack! Player! Does anyone have eyes on El Topo?”

Player’s voice spoke through the comm-link, “He’s in the east orchard, Zack and Ivy are dealing with him.”

At least something was going according to plan. 

Carmen leapt over the area of the tunnel, knowing from experience that El Topo’s burrows were never any wider than he was when they were so close to the surface. Carmen turned to watch Tigress approach, waiting to either let her fall through the thin ceiling into the tunnel or otherwise somehow catch her and shove her through.

But just before she reached the pitfall, Tigress stopped in her tracks. She touched her ear, glancing down at her watch where the green light that had initially alerted Carmen to her presence was now blinking. She dropped her hand then looked to Carmen with a smirk. “Well, that’s my cue. I’d say it’s been fun but you’re not even worth the effort of lying.” Her voice was hoarse from Carmen’s attack. The satisfaction that arose from that fact paled sharply in comparison to the feeling of alarm as Carmen realized she’d run out of time to go back for the warehouse.

Tigress turned and ran into the forest with Carmen hot on her heels. She was faster than Carmen, always had been with her longer legs and more slender form, but Carmen was able to run in the broken trail she left behind. Unhindered by branches or tangling roots. Carmen caught her by the belt, yanking the other woman back and nearly wrestling her down to the ground before Tigress managed to get her foot in between them. She kicked, hard, and Carmen slammed into the prickly base of a tree. Tigress got in one last mean grin and sprinted away while Carmen lurched out of the mess of twigs and thorns. The forest spun nauseatingly around her for a bit as she tried to run after the other woman.

Carmen added ‘mild concussion’ to her running tab of injuries.

Even though she couldn’t see or hear her anymore, she found Tigress’s trail quickly and followed as fast as she could. After a while she realized she could feel a strong wind and smell salt water over the loamy aroma of the rainforest. The farm had been situated near the eastern coast of the island, they’d been running almost straight east so she figured they must be approaching the beach.

Just as Carmen had that thought, she burst out of the trees onto a large rocky outcrop overlooking a steep drop to the ocean. A familiar helicopter began to rise quickly from where it had been hovering nearly level with the cliff. The Cleaners were here, and Tigress was already in midair, leaping to catch her ride. Carmen could just barely make out the silhouettes of the other three operatives inside the helicopter’s cabin.

Carmen didn’t hesitate. She ran forward, engaging her grappling hook from inside her sleeve. But by the time she made it to the edge of the rocks, the chopper was too high for her compact tool to reach. It rose further and faster as it picked up traction, then wobbled dangerously as the door was yanked open and a dark shape leaned out. Carmen couldn’t help the spike of dread that went through her at the thought of the machine spiraling out of control. The people inside may have been VILE through and through, but they’d been her friends once. 

‘Well, some more than others.’ She thought, as the wind kicked up by propellers pulled on her jacket. It tugged painfully on the places where congealing blood had glued the fabric to her wounds. 

A brief memory flashed in her mind, unbidden, as she watched the helicopter steady it’s flight and turn to soar over the glittering sea: A sweltering afternoon on VILE Island. Tigress sunbathing on the white sand beach. El Topo in the shallows, trying to convince a playfully obstinate Le Chevre to join him. Gray lamenting the lack of cold drinks from where he floated just beyond the breaking waves. Carmen herself submerged up to her nose in the cool water, attempting to sneak up and pull Gray under. He’d caught her, of course, and a splash fight of epic proportions had broken out. It engulfed the four of them and only stopped when Tigress started yelling about her sunscreen getting washed off unevenly. Gray had sent Carmen a wink before running up the beach and throwing the blonde over his shoulder, carrying her kicking and screaming into the water as Carmen and the others laughed.

If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the gentle rocking of the ocean.

Yes, they’d been good friends once, when Carmen had thought she’d understood their motives for joining VILE. But how much did she really know them, even then? How much of their friendship was pity for naive little Black Sheep, and how much was true affection? Or at least as true as a cold-hearted criminal could manage. Were two years of close proximity long enough to see who they really were behind the greed and violence? Was one year away long enough that she could separate her feelings of friendship and home from those of betrayal and imprisonment?

Had she failed to stop Tigress tonight because somewhere deep down she still saw her as a friend? If she’d gone easy on her, if she’d subconsciously allowed her to continue her catastrophic destruction, then any deaths by Tigress’s claws stained her hands too.

Fear and shame seeped into her gut as she remembered the guards left in the orchard. Carmen realized she didn’t know what had become of her team either. They’d been fighting El Topo, they were probably fine.

They had to be fine.

She fumbled for her comm-link. “Zack! Ivy! Are you guys okay?!”

The response was instant, their voices piling over each other as they relayed their status rapid-fire.

“Carmen! There you are!”

“Are we okay? What about you? Where have you been? Are you okay?!”

“We’re fine but we’re stuck in a hole!”

“It is pretty cold actually.”

“Yeah it’s wet down here. Carm, can you come get us out?”

“Shut up, bro! We don’t even know if she’s okay yet.”

“Oh yeah, you okay boss?”

Carmen almost collapsed with relief, “Yeah, I’m okay. I’ll be right there to get you guys out.”

“Oh thank goodness. Wet socks should be a crime.”

“Zack we’re already criminals, that wouldn’t help us at all.”

Their argument cut off as Carmen assumed they turned their comm-links off.

A soft whirring sound came from behind her. She spun, hands rising to protect her face only to realize it was Red Drone floating a few feet away. It’s thin, jointed arm stuck out from the bottom hatch and held her hat in it’s little claws. Carmen hadn’t even realized her hat was missing. It must have blown off in the helicopter’s gale.

Player’s voice spoke quietly in her ear “Carmen? Are you really okay?” He sounded almost afraid, like he was talking to a wounded animal. Carmen was suddenly reminded of how young he was.

There was a weight to his words that Zack and Ivy’s questions hadn’t had, though, that made her wonder - not for the first time - if he had some kind of heartbeat monitor in the earpieces he’d outfitted for them. She wasn’t sure she could answer what he was actually asking just yet. She went for the more literal option. “I’m fine. Just a little scratched up.”

Red Drone’s aperture widened and narrowed, as though looking her over. “Okay. It’s just, when you went all radio silent we didn’t know what to think.”

It was times like this that Carmen wished Player didn’t always stay hidden in his little high-tech cave. As glad as she was that he wasn’t in any danger, she would have given anything to be able to hug him tightly just then. 

She smiled at the drone instead, “I’m sorry to have worried you. Thanks for finding my hat.”

“Any time, Red.”

Red Drone drifted closer. Carmen took her hat gently, fitting it snugly around the crown of her head. The drone bobbed a happy little circle before powering off mid-flight and dropping into her outstretched hands. She opened her bag and nestled the robot inside. 

The forest was dark and foreboding after the comparative brightness of the moonlit cliff. Carmen pulled her phone out and checked the GPS. She’d apparently run nearly two miles in pursuit of Tigress, which she would now have to backtrack entirely to return to the farm. She took a deep breath, bounced on the balls of her feet a couple times, and bolted back into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Radar is such a good word in the Aussie accent. Radar. Radar. Try it yourself!


	3. 2019, Vanilla Venality in Madagascar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: mentions of self harm

Part 1.3: Howl

Gray watched Le Chevre smoothly navigate the thick rainforest that surrounded the vanilla farm. Forever envious of the ease at which the taller man leapt from root to rock while Gray slogged through the underbrush, his jumpsuit catching and tearing on any number of thorny plants hidden in the shrubbery and the darkness of the night. He checked his GPS and saw their four green triangles right where they were supposed to be; his and Le Chevre’s headed southeast from where they had been waiting for the sun to set, Tigress and El Topo’s stationary in the western orchard.

Everyone was following their instructions for now, though he was certain things would go off the rails soon enough.

Gray didn’t like the plan for this heist. It wasn’t what he would have designed and he felt it left a lot of room for error. Not to mention it seemed needlessly cruel to steal from such a poor nation when VILE could easily bankroll the entire island. He was never one to ruminate on the people he was stealing from, generally assuming if anyone was wealthy enough to catch a criminal empire’s attention then they could stand to lose whatever VILE was after. He knew that wasn’t fair, that it made him complicit in their more odious dealings, but Gray had never been under any pretext that he was a good person. Good people didn’t join an organization that blatantly advertised their business as illegal importing and they certainly didn’t stick around when that organization revealed themselves to just be straight up evil for the sake of being evil. 

Good people ran away when things like that happened. Good people dropped off the map for months and then came back to fight against organizations like the one he belonged to. 

Hypothetically speaking.

No, Gray knew he wasn’t a good person. But he liked to think that he wasn’t the worst either. He didn’t enjoy making his targets suffer the way Tigress did. He didn’t take any pleasure from hurting people or holding the threat of bodily harm over them the way Paper Star seemed to. VILE operatives never really got a choice in the missions they were assigned to but this definitely wasn’t one he would have volunteered for. However, Dr. Bellum had handed this plan down from on high during their briefing and there was no questioning the Faculty, no matter how hair-brained or horrific their schemes sounded.

Gray yanked his leg out of the grip of some new thorny vine and nearly collided with Le Chevre where he had stopped.

The taller man raised a judgmental eyebrow. “Why is it I am the one named after the goat yet you are the one crashing through the underbrush like a wild animal?”

Gray scowled.

Le Chevre watched him for a couple of seconds and then sighed. “Mon Dieu, perhaps Tigress was right after all.” He turned back to the so-called ‘path’ they were taking, though Gray thought it looked a lot more like a deer trail and if he hadn’t been checking the map he would have accused the other man of leading them in circles.

Le Chevre continued, “This is where the path splits. The warehouse to the left, the orchard to the right.”

Gray tapped a button on the side of his watch and a small green light turned on. A matching one lit up on Le Chevre’s wrist, and he knew three more were igniting in the distance. Two in the west orchard where Tigress and El Topo waited to begin their slash and burn. One on the console of a helicopter that sat idle on the eastern coast line. They had thirty minutes to complete their mission before the Cleaners would come inland looking for them. It was Gray’s first mission since his retraining. He thought all the supervision was a little overkill, but they’d put too much work into him at this point to allow him to fail again or go rogue. It was vanilla or bust for old Crackle.

He and Le Chevre resumed their march to the warehouse.

The fence cut through the forest abruptly, the packed dirt of the farm’s entrance was frosted in moonlight. After the claustrophobic darkness of the forest, it felt bright as day.

The two of them hopped the fence and made their way around the side of the warehouse. It was easy, he thought, so easy to creep around unnoticed when the forest was so loud around them. So easy to break in and steal the beating heart from this fledgling industry. It felt like one of the stupid written exams Professor Maelstrom was always giving him: ‘Which option presents a better target? The yacht with the keys lifted from a drunken frat boy, or the family-owned jewelry store with only a locked door and cameras for security? Explain your reasoning in full detail.’

Gray always managed to pick the wrong answer, regardless if he chose based on what he really thought or what he thought Maelstrom wanted to hear. He wasn’t convinced there was a right one. Maelstrom always ended those lessons with the same lecture. It wasn’t about right or wrong, it wasn’t about easy or hard. At the end of the day it was only ever about the money.

It was hard to think about the money when he looked at the building they were breaking into. The warehouse was a long, squat, concrete structure with a tin roof and simple padlocks on the windows. Gray could break into this place in his sleep. Whatever these beans were worth, could it really condone such excessive force as four of VILE’s infamous Forty Thieves convening to wreak havoc?

He supposed it was about five minutes too late to worry about that now.

The lone guard stood near the door, just around the corner from them. He had a rifle hanging from one shoulder and what looked like a knife sheathed at his waist. The man was small, thin and wiry as opposed to the typical security guard dimensions of big and bigger. He didn’t seem very intimidating. But if there was one thing you learned quickly at VILE Academy it was that size and shape didn’t indicate anything about a person’s lethality.

The guard was armed, alert, and - most importantly - in their way. That made him enough of a threat to take seriously.

The two VILE operatives stood silently. Le Chevre cast a sideways glance at him that had him wondering if his borderline treasonous thoughts had shown on his face. Gray gave an impatient jerk of his head towards the guard. Le Chevre looked like he wanted to say something but stopped himself at the last minute, shooting Gray a sour expression before pivoting around the corner. Gray heard the guard begin to shout, the wet thwack-crunch of bone hitting bone, and then the thud of a body falling to the ground. 

Le Chevre was already picking the lock on the door when Gray caught up. He spared a glance at the man on the ground. He had landed mostly face down, his head twisted to the side slightly so Gray was able to see some of the damage. His eyes caught first on the blood glistening black in the white moonlight. There was a lot of it, splattered around an obviously broken nose and pooling in the dirt. Gray wouldn’t be able to see it in the shadow cast by the roof but he’d bet there was a skid of blood on the wall where the man’s head hit the concrete.

The force seemed excessive, but if it kept him from remembering the flash of Le Chevre’s face he must have gotten then it would have been worth it. Gray leaned a little closer, taking in the shape of the man’s swelling face and his clothes. His weathered hands where they lay splayed out near his chest. He felt a wave of nausea roll over him. 

This was not professional security, not a trained guard or muscle for hire. The man who lay unconscious and bleeding at his feet was, in fact, the old farmer they had met with when they arrived that morning. Gray flashed back to shaking the man’s hand in the hot sun, remarking politely about the beauty of the surroundings. He hadn’t stuck around long after meeting the man - Andry, that was his name - deciding his presence was needed more at the gate with Tigress than it was with Le Chevre who already had El Topo to keep him civil. Gray had liked Andry for the short while he knew him. The old farmer’s hands had been calloused, he remembered, dry and leathery but his face had scrunched into a hundred laughing wrinkles as he’d quickly introduced a few of the other farmers to the VILE operatives.

Gray had the sudden realization that the guards in the orchards were also not likely to be hired muscle. Rather, it was probable they were those same men or even their sons who were patrolling the trees. He regretted not arguing for Tigress to be on lockpick duty. He genuinely didn’t know just how much damage she intended to inflict today. He hadn’t cared to ask, thinking professional guards should be prepared for a violent intruder. She’d become far more aggressive lately, as though trying to be angry for his sake on top of her normal fury. Tigress had never been able to understand people who didn’t think exactly like her, but she still seemed to care in her own ruthless way even if it was just the principle of the matter. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t out for blood after being left for the police to find. Why he wasn’t frothing at the mouth trying to get revenge on Black Sheep for what she’d inadvertently put him through at the hands of the Faculty, and she'd made it her responsibility to be violent for him.

The thought of Black Sheep brought a bubble of hope to the surface of his turmoil. If she was here, if Carmen Sandiego showed up tonight, she’d be able to stop Tigress before anything too drastic happened. That was one thing he could count on.

Le Chevre finished picking the lock and opened the door with a slight creak that was easily attributed to the wind. Gray pushed his bile down and made himself step over Andry’s body without hesitation.

The small, high windows of the warehouse did little to illuminate the dark interior. Le Chevre pulled a small lantern out of his pack and tossed it to Gray while he dug out several large cloth bags, all neatly folded, each one nearly half as tall as he was and lined with crinkly plastic. Gray closed the door behind him and switched on the little fluorescent light. Several long tables immediately came into view, their surfaces covered in sheet plastic and balls of twine. Along the side walls were four enormous solid wooden crates. They were big enough that Gray thought he probably could have fit inside with room to spare. The crates all had multiple padlocks on their fronts, the two on the right had six each while the two on the left had four and three.

Le Chevre passed one of the bags to Gray, placing the others on the table with Gray’s lantern. He nodded to the crates, “The crates belong to the different farms that are a part of the coalition. They bring their beans here to be processed and stored, and the owners all keep the keys on them separately. Supposed to be for safety but it’s more convenient for us, no?”

Gray hummed a noncommittal sound and turned to the crates on the right. He slipped his lockpick set out of his pocket and started in. It really was a good system, the whole farm had enough security to protect them from any reasonable threat to their livelihood. Trained super-thieves from an international crime syndicate was a distant outlier in terms of what could be expected to happen to a small farm in the middle of nowhere.

Yet here they were.

The first lock dropped open in his palm. The metallic weight of it satisfied some part of his brain that liked nothing more than being rewarded for simple muscle memory tasks. He moved on to the second.

Gray was nearly finished with his third padlock before he heard the soft click of Le Chevre’s first one. He wished, not for the first time, that he had someone a little faster for a partner. Someone smaller and chattier, full of useless trivia knowledge.

Black Sheep had always been amazing at lockpicking, patient and content to tick steadily through the tumblers. At times it had seemed like she’d been born with a lockpick in her hand, which he knew now was basically the truth. He’d never managed to catch up to her speed, but that hadn’t stopped her from challenging him to a race whenever she could and it never stopped him from accepting.

He missed the warmth of her excitement. Something as simple as a sprout of green poking up through the sand had her rattling off information like a walking encyclopedia. It wasn’t a weed, it was a brave explorer from a distant land! A traveler that had survived unimaginable distance and danger to make a new home on their beach! How incredible! How wonderful! Gray smiled at the memory. Anything new was a cause for celebration with her, which made the whole world seem a little brighter and more interesting.

Gray knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her. If he was back at the academy he’d have a face full of gym mat for just the reminiscing he’d done already. But here in the cool jungle night, with only the tiny differences in pressure of the padlock gears to pay attention to, he allowed his mind to drift.

The last lock popped open before he realized he was finished. He placed it on the floor in a line with the others and opened the crate with a heavy creak. The scent of vanilla that lightly perfumed the air before was overwhelming now, aggressively sweet and floral. It smelled like the bakeries he used to visit back in Sydney. It smelled like the blooming flowers on the Isle of VILE after a summer rain. He tried not to linger on the thought that neither of those places brought any feeling of homesickness anymore.

Gray reached into the deep wooden box, pulling back the loose sheet of plastic covering the vanilla pods to begin scooping them into his bag. They were pliable under his hands, like still-green twigs, and somehow both dry and sticky at the same time. Their residue stained his skin black wherever he touched them.

He filled two of the bags with the beans, then began to work on the second crate. He didn’t bother replacing the locks on the first.

The quiet of the room was stifling, every click of the padlocks and every shift of a knee or a foot seemed to echo from the metal and stone walls. They hadn’t heard anything from the other team, and Gray knew Le Chevre was getting antsy about it. He tried to make a little more noise while taking his padlocks out of their frames to keep the other man focused. He knew Le Chevre and El Topo usually talked more on their comm-links during missions, but as far as Gray was concerned there just wasn’t anything that needed to be said here. If everything went smoothly they could expect some gloating from Tigress over the line. If not, well, that’s what the Cleaners were there for. 

All of VILE’s missions came with a high cost for failure, not typically from VILE themselves but Gray had always been one to seek out loopholes. His life literally hung on the success of this caper. If he didn’t come back with the vanilla in hand, not only would he not get another chance but he would immediately be given over to Dr. Bellum to test her most lethal gadgets. Which was a roundabout way of reminding himself that he shouldn’t hope Carmen Sandiego would show up to save the day.

And yet.

It wasn’t worry or fear he felt when he swore he saw a flash of scarlet high in the tree. 

Maybe it really was just a fat old lemur that he’d seen. Maybe he’d imagined it entirely. He saw that particular shade of red everywhere these days, darting around corners or slipping through crowds. He was tired of the teasing that would inevitably follow when he chased it down and it was nothing more than a bank teller in a scarf or once, notably, an especially colorful plastic bag. He was tired of getting his hopes up, or was it down? He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about Carmen Sandiego anymore. He didn’t even know what he would do if he saw her face to face. He had plenty of ideas, fantasies that played on repeat in his head when he got to thinking about it. Some of them he liked, and some he really didn’t. But when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure he would ever be fully prepared to meet her again. Not after her betrayal in Poitiers. Not after his in Casablanca.

He fished the last lock out of its metal loop, filled two more bags with the sticky bean pods, and went back to the center table. Gray used some of the twine on the table to tie the bags together, just in case. He picked at his hands while he waited on his teammate. Rubbing at them until his hands stung under the pitch-like coating.

Le Chevre finished bagging his beans quickly, following Gray’s lead to tie the bags together. He pulled a face at his blackened palms and tried to wipe the residue off on his suit to no avail.

Gray checked his watch again. Twelve minutes to go and they still hadn’t heard anything from the others. As they opened the door, Gray realized he could just hear the sounds of fighting over the constant buzz of the rainforest. The western orchard was close to the farm, that’s where the sound must have been coming from. 

That was where Tigress was stationed. 

He froze in the doorway, all his senses prickling at the sheer amount of self control it took to not drop his bags and make a break for it. He berated himself for not chasing that flash of red earlier. His shoulders were painfully tight, his fingers numb with the force he exerted on the door jam to merely keep himself in place.

He didn’t know for sure that it was Carmen Sandiego. Tigress could be making a lot of noise for any number of reasons.

He didn’t know that it wasn’t Carmen Sandiego. No one else could put Tigress on the ropes quite like she could.

It had been a year since he’d seen her and now she could be here, on the same island as him. Likely less than a mile away. Gray could hear Maelstrom’s lecturing voice in his head, crooning that Carmen Sandiego was his enemy. A traitor. A liability. The ghost of Coach Brunt’s fingertips caught him by the back of his neck. Shadowsan’s disapproving stare watched him through his own mind. He remembered that Tigress was more vindictive these days than she’d ever been before. If Black Sheep was here she might need his help. If she was here he needed to capture her, and bring her back. If she was here...

He needed to find out either way. He needed to leave right now, Le Chevre could handle the bags or he could ditch them somewhere in the woods. Gray didn’t care anymore. He just needed to get past that line of trees to know what was happening.

Le Chevre shoved him from behind, sending Gray stumbling over Andry’s body where they had left it outside the door. He spoke sharply, “Crackle! Whatever crisis you are currently having, we do not have time for it!”

Gray blinked back in dazed confusion for a moment, “What? Crisis? I’m not-” He cut himself off. The Frenchman was right. The large bags were too bulky for Le Chevre to carry all on his own, and if they both went back for Black Sheep there was no way they could make it to the Cleaners on time.

He shook his head free from the static and nodded. Le Chevre watched him for a moment more with something that looked a little like concern and a lot like irritation before taking off for the forest behind the warehouse. Gray spared one last look at the old farmer, blood still seeped out of his broken nose and split lip. It gurgled softly as he breathed through it. Gray followed Le Chevre back over the fence and into the trees.

They didn’t worry about being quiet this time, both of them running as fast as possible to the beach where the Cleaners waited. At the eight minute mark they paused briefly in the dark woods. Le Chevre pressed the knuckle of his finger onto his earpiece to turn it on, trying to keep the black stains off the tech. He talked quickly, his voice echoing unpleasantly in Gray’s head as one ear heard him speak in real time while the comm-link lagged ever so slightly. “Topo, Tigress. Eight minutes to go. The Cleaners will hover a little while but hurry and finish what you are doing.”

Gray pressed another button on his watch. The static light began flashing green, an insurance policy if one of the others had broken their comm-links. The two began running again.

When they reached the edge of the forest, they moved north until they found the only part of the cliff with less than a ninety-degree angle for them to climb down. Gray tossed his bags into the sand below and descended carefully. Le Chevre, true to form, hoisted his treasures over one shoulder and scaled down the steep cliffside one-handed, shooting Gray a smug grin as he overtook him. Gray barely resisted the urge to kick him, nearly slipping in the half second he’d taken his eyes off his own feet. 

Boris was already waiting by the open stowage hatch by the time they both made it down. They’d taken the smaller helicopter this time instead of the large one the Cleaners usually flew - no sky-diving needed this time - so not all the bags fit into the cramped luggage compartment. Gray brought the last two inside with him. Vlad began the takeoff pattern immediately. They began to rise slowly, kicking up a sandy whirlwind around them. Gray almost laughed when Vlad stoically flipped the windshield wipers a few times.

Instead he looked back to his hands, stained black from all the vanilla pods he’d stolen. Stained from this shitty caper he hadn’t planned and hadn’t wanted to do. He tried rubbing his hands off on his knees but the gunk clung stubbornly, only rolling up the fabric and getting his jumpsuit dirty too. He thought about how he’d spiraled almost out of control at just the idea of Black Sheep being nearby. The crude-oil tendrils of VILE’s reconditioning still clung to his psyche, screaming at him to take her down. As he scrubbed at his hands he felt like they were filling him up completely. A writhing mass of toxic sludge that compelled him to do whatever the Faculty wanted, regardless of his needs or desires. 

When he’d been alone at VILE Academy he’d had something close to this feeling a few times. He’d sat in his room and nearly driven himself mad with the thought that Dr Bellum had somehow replaced all his blood with tar while he was asleep. Couldn’t let go of the idea that if he sliced his arm open it wouldn’t bleed but would ooze something thick and black and rotten instead. He’d never indulged the impulse, it was easy enough then to wait until he had another class with Coach Brunt to find out that he was still a healthy crimson inside, but the desire came back to him now.

The helicopter hung at the top of the cliff for two minutes. Then four. Gray gave up on his hands, swollen and hot as they were after all his picking at them. Le Chevre stood up and opened the door as El Topo came charging out of the trees. He took a running leap, his huge metal claws catching the landing rail just as Boris tilted the whole machine back to compensate for the sudden extra weight. Gray and Le Chevre each grabbed a beefy arm to heave El Topo inside. He was wet all over, and in the blinking lights of the helicopter cabin Gray could see that his legs were covered in drying mud.

He raised his eyebrows as the shorter man sat down, “Crikey. What happened to you, then?”

El Topo grinned, “Ran into some trouble. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Gray nodded like that answered anything. 

He went back to the open door to watch for Tigress. He didn’t have to wait long.

The last member of their group burst out of the trees and sprinted to the helicopter with an urgency El Topo definitely hadn’t had. She leapt for the open door feet first, blindly trusting that she would make the jump or he would help her in. Gray reached out to steady her as her toes just barely caught the edge. He pulled her in and shut the door.

Tigress fluttered her eyelashes at him, “Thanks babe. Is that the stuff?” She let go of his arm and darted to the bags of vanilla sitting on Gray’s seat, opening the drawstring and breathing in the scent with a pleased moan.

Gray felt the grime coating his hands finally begin to loosen, her arms had been wet too. He flexed his fingers, feeling the slight grit of the vanilla roll across his skin in the thickening liquid. He didn’t remember there being a sprinkler system in the orchards, that would have been included in their briefing or in Le Chevre’s tour. Had the guards brought out a hose to use against them? But then why wasn’t she soaked like El Topo?

What had happened to their team? What was on her face? There were dark smudges and splatters up Tigress’s neck and jaw. She wouldn’t be in such a good mood if she was also covered in mud so he doubted whatever had happened to El Topo had happened to her too.

Gray held his arm out closer to the window and into a shaft of moonlight. Tigress had left a dark smear across his forearm when she let go. It wasn’t soaking into the fabric the way the muddy water had when he’d grabbed El Topo. Gray suddenly had a very bad feeling about their mission.

He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back from the bag roughly, forcing her to look up at him. “Tigress, what the hell happened down there?” 

The blonde’s face fell into an annoyed pout. “What, this?” She gestured to her neck, “Just letting off a little steam. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt your backstabbing girlfriend...much.” She grinned, all sharp teeth.

Gray swore and dove for the door, slamming it open and throwing the whole cabin off balance with his sudden movements. His teammates complained behind him but he wasn’t listening. All his attention focused on one singular, glowing point in the night.

Black Sheep stood on the cliffs below. 

No. 

Carmen Sandiego stood there, her bright red coat catching the blinking lights of the helicopter. 

‘Must have lost her hat in the fight.’ He thought dimly. Her hair whipped behind her in the chopper’s draft. It was black in the moonlight but he knew the exact shade of scarlet it should be.

She didn’t try to catch them, didn’t run away or pull some new trick out of her sleeves. She just stood on the rocks and watched them leave. An unintentional but appreciated gift to him, he thought. If she had tried to catch them he would have had to react, would have had to think, and he didn’t know if he was up to that challenge at the moment. The feeling of needing to crawl out of his own skin returned to him, much stronger now than at the warehouse.

He watched her until the helicopter turned away and he couldn’t see her anymore.

Tigress’s claws snagged his sleeve and pulled him back in. Gray didn’t have to force the tight, conflicted frown on his face. Tigress scoffed at him, but her hands were as gentle as she knew how to be where they gripped his arm. She gave him an exasperated look as if to ask, ‘Are you done here? Can we go now?’

Gray took a moment to smooth his hair back from where the wind had pushed it down across his forehead, regardless of whatever muck coated them now. He pulled the first aid kit off the storage rack above the seats and offered it to her. Tigress plucked it from his hand and turned away with a flounce.

El Topo and Le Chevre were watching him. Gray tossed the bags of vanilla over as a distraction and determinedly looked out the window until he heard them begin to talk again. Their multilingual chatter a soothing enough backdrop for him to relax slightly into his seat and watch the waves rush past.

\-------------------------------------------------------

The Cleaners dropped them off in Mozambique as the sun rose over the city, the tall white buildings and skyscrapers gleamed in the soft morning light. The helipad belonged to a VILE associate and sat nearby an expensive beach resort where the operatives were allowed to shower and eat before they’d have to catch their private jet back to VILE Island.

The owner had been friendly enough with Le Chevre and El Topo as they disembarked, dipping a pale, manicured hand into Le Chevre's proffered bag with relish. She’d blanched at the sight of Gray, however, and nearly dropped her mimosa when Tigress slipped out behind him. In the light of the day he could admit the two of them looked pretty gruesome.

Tigress had steaks of blood up her arms and across her chest, though she’d cleaned the spots off of her face. Gray had tried to clean his hands with the small antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit but had only succeeded in pushing the vanilla and blood around until it coated his hands and wrists in black and rust colored swirls. The bag he carried had unmistakable bloody handprints around the top.

The owner had shown them to a couple empty rooms before hurrying away. Back to her brunch and pedicures and imports of dubious legality.

“Good riddance.” Gray muttered, sneering at her retreating form. Anyone who tried to keep their hands clean while working for VILE was waste of resources as far as he was concerned.

Once they pulled themselves away from the resort spas, the plane ride back was quiet. Tigress was entirely absorbed in her phone, trying to get as much social media time in as possible before she would have to surrender the device at the academy. El Topo and Le Chevre continued to converse happily, their heads bent close together over the small table between them. Gray tried his damnedest to sort his feelings and memories appropriately before he would have to face the Faculty again. 

He shelved his hurt and desperation, stuffed his longing under the mental floorboards, beat the love that smouldered in his chest back with a broom until he could breathe again. The anger and frustration he kept out on display. That’s what he would be expected to feel, what he had been trained to think when the topic of Black Sheep or Carmen Sandiego was brought up, so that’s what he would show them.

How could you still love someone who had betrayed you, anyway?

When the plane landed, Vlad and Boris were somehow already waiting for them at the landing strip. Gray briefly contemplated the logistics of that until they reached for his bag of vanilla to take to store with the rest. Gray snatched it away and glared at them until they backed off.

He followed his teammates up the huge entryway staircase, past the small clusters of current students who loitered around in the sunlight between classes and into the dark, crystalline interior of the school.

The conference room looked exactly like it always did. Huge, dim, and absurdly positioned as if the Faculty were medieval royalty and their students mere peons who grasped above their station by just thinking about talking to them. Gray had been in there so many times that the room was only ridiculous to him now, though he could see the effect it had on the others by the way they squared their shoulders and held their chins higher.

Were they proud to stand before their instructors and be judged like dogs in a ring? Or were they intimidated, and trying to compensate with confidence?

Gray didn’t know, though he thought the answer might differ depending on who he asked. He walked closer to the raised table, opened the drawstring clip on the bag, and tossed the beans up. The bag was light for all that it was bulky, and it landed perfectly in between Dr Bellum and Countess Cleo. It bounced slightly, loosening the drawn top and dramatically spilling the bean pods across the clean, white surface of the table as it settled. The sweet perfume released had all the instructors sniffing the air happily, as he’d hoped. He turned away and took his place with the others.

Dr Bellum picked up one of the longer beans and turned it around in her gloved hands, not caring at all about the residue that quickly began to stain her fingertips. 

She smiled, manic as always “Excellent work, my dear boy.”

Cleo’s glossy lips twisted in distaste as she skimmed a finger across the bloodstains on the fabric. “I trust you didn’t run into too much trouble?”

Her posh voice was even more condescending than usual. Gray glanced at El Topo, then back at the Countess. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

Coach Brunt leaned in, “But something did happen. Was it our Little Red?”

Tigress stepped forward, flipping her hair back at the three of them, “Yeah, of course Santa Maria or whatever showed up. She was too late to stop us though, and I got a couple good cat-scratches in.”

Brunt laughed, “Atta girl. See Crackle, that’s what we like to hear.”

Gray smiled but let some of his anger show through in his eyes and posture. “Duly noted, Coach.”

Maelstrom stood from where he had been silently observing. Everyone fell silent, and even Tigress stepped back in line. “Against all odds, it appears that your mission was successful. However, what I am most curious about was your behavior, Crackle.”

Gray opened his mouth to answer but the Professor continued, “Let’s go down the line, shall we? Tigress, how do you think Crackle performed during his caper?”

Tigress seemed to quail ever so slightly from the weight of all five Faculty members’ stares. 

‘Oh here we go.’ Gray thought, watching her coolly from the corner of his eyes, ‘Figures he’d start with the one most likely to throw me under the bus.’

“Crackle was fine. He managed to pull all four of his brain cells together and not screw up this training-wheels heist.”

Bellum and Brunt chuckled under their breath, and even Cleo and Maelstrom smirked at the insult. Gray wasn’t bothered by it, but he was deeply suspicious of Tigress not getting him into trouble on purpose. Especially when she had been witness to his outburst in the helicopter and could have easily painted him in a much less flattering light.

He turned his head to face her. She didn’t look back but he could have sworn her mouth twitched up slightly.

Maelstrom let his eyes trail over Gray to land on his teammate beside him. “And what did you think, El Topo? Did Crackle present any, let's say, ‘worrying’ behaviors while you were with him?”

El Topo stood calmly in the face of the Faculty’s attention, serene to the bitter end. Gray wasn’t worried about a bad review from El Topo. The man didn’t have a malicious bone in his body and wouldn’t start drama where there was no need.

“I agree with Tigress. For being away for so long, Crackle did very well.”

Maelstrom nodded, also unsurprised. He turned to face the last member of the team, “Le Chevre? What do you think? You were the one with our boy Crackle the most.”

‘Hmmm. Wildcard.’ Gray watched the Frenchman in his peripherals. Le Chevre loved watching drama play out, but wasn’t always willing to start it. He had the most ammunition against Gray considering he’d seen both freakouts. If he decided it was worth it, he could get Gray into a lot of trouble. But if he was feeling lazy today...

“Personally, I do not think Crackle should be out in the field alone.”

‘...Bastard.’

Le Chevre kept talking over the glare Gray shot him. “His technical skill is high, but once we knew Black Sheep was on the island he was like a man possessed. I think he is not yet ready to face her.”

Gray decided it had been a while since he trained with the taller man. Maybe he would agree to a few rounds in the sparring rooms before he left for his next mission. Maybe he wouldn’t agree but Gray would drag him there anyway.

Maelstrom was grinning his putrid smile at the front of the room. “Thank you, Le Chevre, for your honest assessment. It will be taken under consideration for the continuing of Crackle’s education. The three of you are dismissed.”

Le Chevre inclined his head in thanks and turned to leave with the others, leaving Gray to his lectures without a backwards glance.

‘Maybe we’ll do bo-staffs.’ Gray thought to himself as he and the Faculty waited for the room to clear out, ‘Le Chevre’s never been good at stick-fighting. Or wrestling, Coach would probably be willing to ref for that.’

The huge doors closed behind him and he took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for whatever questioning was about to come his way. He looked down the line to the only instructor who hadn’t spoken yet.

Shadowsan watched him silently, glaring down as though Gray had personally, deliberately failed him. Gray knew the man wouldn’t tell him why but the disappointment stung nonetheless. He knew where he stood with the other instructors, but it was never clear if the stealth teacher was trying to help him or trying to trick him. In the face of the frequent open hostility from the other instructors, Shadowsan’s ambiguous nature often felt more like an opportunity than anything else. Gray couldn’t help but want the man’s approval.

He maintained eye contact as Maelstrom’s droning voice began reading out Gray’s new schedule. Shadowsan gave no indication that he would speak at all, much less in favor of or against Gray’s wellbeing. The sheer weight of his glare reminded Gray of the king tides he once tried to surf back home in Australia. The plummeting, untethered sensation of dropping down the huge wave’s face, the painful kick of the surge when he’d inevitably lose his balance. He’d never felt so fragile as when the waves would knock him down and hold him deep underwater.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not from Madagascar and I have never been there. If I've left anything out or gotten anything egregiously wrong, please tell me. I would love to know. I had to simplify a lot of the vanilla farming practices for this to work, but if anything about it seems interesting I highly recommend you look more into it. Shit's fucked up. It's honestly astonishing that vanilla can be bought for less than $1000 an ounce. Also I should have mentioned this in the last chapter but lots of things are derived from petroleum, including artificial vanilla. That's not a bad thing that I made VILE do because it's gross and evil, it's just a fun quirk of chemistry.
> 
> Fun fact: Did you know the vanilla orchid is one of the most absurdly difficult plants to farm in the world? It's sparse flowers only bloom for one day and they must be pollinated by cutting them open before noon and using a toothpick because if you wait for the flowers to open naturally, it'll be too late and you'll have missed the window. Each successfully pollinated flower will produce about 7 beans and each bean takes 9 months of daily drying in the sun and nightly sweating in containers to become the product we see in stores.


	4. 2019, Polokwane, South Africa

Part 1.4: Howl 

Carmen sipped a mug of tea and looked out the window at the simple city-scape before her. She’d watched it come to life since waking up early in the morning, the sounds and smells of the outside world trickling through the cracked window and gently swaying the soft white curtains. She had a good view of a tree lined roadway with tall buildings across the street, brown stone edifices with cream colored accents and shaded windows. A traffic circle filled with flowering bushes and carefully pruned trees sat nearly out of view from her window. If she leaned in a little bit from where she sat at the hotel’s drawing table she could see a park just beyond it, vibrantly green against the muted, dignified buildings and red earth hills beyond. 

She took another sip of tea. It was strong despite the milk and sugar she’d added. The city was bustling in the morning light despite the wretched silence that hung heavy in her empty room. 

She’d never failed a mission before. 

She’d never lost a prize, except where the other party cheated. But VILE hadn’t cheated this time. She’d simply been out-manned, and out-maneuvered. 

They’d saved the orchards but lost the beans, lost the product that the farmers livelihoods depended on. And they’d only sort of saved the orchards anyway. Many of the vines had been damaged in the fight with Tigress, and while they hadn’t lost too many trees in the west orchard, whole rows of the east orchard trees had been listing sideways by the time Carmen made it back from the cliffs. 

Carmen didn’t know anything about growing vanilla, whether the vines would grow back in time to produce a crop for the next year or if they would go into shock and wither. The farmers had skated around answering that question so she was inclined to believe the latter. 

The thought of those men pulled a sigh from her. She put her mug down in it’s saucer with a small but steady clink and leaned back in her chair. 

While fishing Zack and Ivy out of El Topo’s tunnels, she’d pulled the east orchard guards out as well. They’d mostly been farmers, and sons of farmers, not trained bodyguards. Which made VILE’s actions all the more reprehensible. The farm coalition that VILE targeted had been among the largest and wealthiest, but even they couldn’t afford more than basic training and equipment for a few individuals. 

It was an easy target for VILE, but still not one that made any sense to Carmen. Valuable products but not so valuable they couldn’t be gotten elsewhere, unprotected but not so unprotected as to not bring risk. 

‘Low hanging fruit.’ She thought with a morbid prick of humor, remembering the ripe bean pods that had been trampled in the fight. 

Tigress had been insane on that job, certifiably as far as Carmen was concerned. She’d broken nearly every one of VILE’s rules of engagement. Namely, don’t. Do not engage unless it is absolutely necessary. If you have to fight, end it quickly and cleanly to keep your own exit clear as long as possible. 

Tigress had done the opposite, taking her frustrations out in merciless slashes that all but guaranteed an intensive investigation into the heist. That was exactly why a criminal organization had so many rules, to keep the work a damn secret! Now the authorities who were called would look into the visitors the farm had that day, the correspondences they must have been having beforehand, any suspicious person who showed up around that time and maybe left soon after. If Interpol got wind of it, even that lunatic Devineaux might get involved. Despite being dead set on the wrong target, he had managed to find all the clues to VILE’s collusion through sheer grit and determination. The man was clearly an idiot but Carmen wasn’t willing to rule him out entirely as a threat. 

Maybe she should do something to confuse the trail. He was still tracking her so if she showed her face somewhere unexpected then perhaps he and his cute partner would overlook the Madagascar fiasco… 

Carmen stood up so quickly her chair was knocked over backwards, the clattering of wood on wood echoed in the empty space around her. 

What. Was. She. Thinking!? 

She wasn’t part of VILE anymore! She shouldn’t be trying to cover up their tracks, even if their trail of destruction also lead to her! It was so easy to slip back into that familiar way of thinking, that way of looking at the world as nothing more than a board game where pieces could be moved and taken and lost with no real consequence. It was like breathing the recycled air in Dr. Bellum’s labs. So easy to ignore the harsh, sterile scent that clung to the back of her throat until she stepped outside again and realized what she’d been missing. 

Carmen tugged her hair from it’s bun, giving it a shake before pulling it back up tight and beginning to pace the length of the room. She made herself remember the damage VILE had done. Not only Tigress but El Topo as well. She remembered the strain of dragging eight men out of six-foot deep tunnels in the east orchard, many of them with sprained or broken legs from the fall. She remembered helping to carry the terribly wounded guards from the west orchard to the ambulance that showed up once Player had been able to patch through to the local emergency services. 

She remembered the bone-deep weariness as she’d watched the ambulance rush off, and the stains she was sure she would never get out of her coat. 

After checking on the few remaining uninjured guards to get the whole story, Team Red had been invited to stay with a young farm hand from the main farm. Solofo had thankfully only been muddy and sore, so when his wife drove up looking for him, all three members of Carmen’s little crew had squeezed into the small car and driven up to his little village tucked into the hills inland from the farm. 

Solofo had seen Zack and Ivy try to trap El Topo, and had heard from his brother in the west orchard about Carmen chasing off Tigress. He was grateful, he’d said, they were all grateful that she’d stayed to save the orchards even though the thieves got away with the vanilla. 

“Theft happens all the time.” He’d said, trying to comfort her, “And we’ve lost more than this to storms before. Now we can keep working, instead of losing the whole farm.” 

His wife Felana had let them use their bathroom, setting up a simple room divider to separate Carmen and Ivy from Zack and Solofo as they removed their filthy clothes. Her young son helped to bring buckets of cold water from the pump outside to scrub off the mud that stuck to their skin. Carmen had dropped her coat in the pile and begun peeling out of her blacks under the assumption that she would do the same as the others, but as soon as Felana came around the changing screen with another bucket and saw the messy cuts from Tigress, she’d wrapped her in a fluffy towel and sat her in the kitchen to wait while she boiled the water for a warm bath instead. 

Carmen had protested, and when that was quickly shut down she’d offered to at least help with the food Felana was cooking while they waited. The woman had pinned her with a suspicious side-eye and then given her the most basic of tasks. Whether because she didn’t want Carmen to strain her injuries or because she didn’t trust her to chop the vegetables just right, Carmen couldn’t say. So she’d sat quietly in the stove-warmed kitchen, dutifully peeling onions and keeping an eye on the pot of rice and trying not to cry at the thought of the men who might not make it back from the hospital to their own kitchens. At the overwhelming kindness of this family who had taken them in when they were exhausted and hungry. At this soft feeling of hominess she’d never known. 

Once the others finished cleaning up, they all jostled into the small kitchen, claiming seats and complimenting the smells wafting out from the stove. Zack and Ivy had been given clothes to wear while their muddy clothes were put into a tub of soapy water to soak, obscurely branded shirts and shorts that wouldn’t look out of place on a sunny beach. The clothes didn’t quite fit - too baggy on Zack’s lanky frame and tight around Ivy’s shoulders and chest - but they were clean, worn and soft with age, and Carmen was grateful to have a set handed to her once the bathroom was free. 

Solofo had helped to fill the bathtub while Carmen stood to the side and tried not to get in the way. Once it was full, Felana had come in to approve the temperature. The water was visibly steaming but the older woman had dipped her hand in, nodded, and handed over a washcloth and a roll of bandages before heading back into the kitchen with a warning that the water from the pump was clean but not potable so Carmen should wash quickly while it was warm and then come wash her face in the kitchen where the water was filtered. 

Ivy had lingered after the others left, fidgeting with the conflicting desires to talk and to give Carmen space. She turned her back to the room as Carmen tugged off her leggings and began washing off the worst of the mess into a separate bucket so she wouldn’t be stuck sitting in a soup of blood and dirt. 

After a minute of silence, Ivy spoke with uncharacteristic hesitance. “Are you, sure you’re okay? Carmen?” She turned her head so Carmen could hear the question, but only so far as to watch the left wall rather than the door. Carmen appreciated the attempt at privacy. She didn't know if she could take any more worried looks. 

“I’m fine. Tigress was extra mean today but she’s still not good enough to really hurt me.” Carmen’s voice was far steadier than she felt. 

She wished Ivy would leave so she could stop holding herself together so tightly. She wished she didn’t wish for her friend to leave. 

The redhead nodded quickly, “Right. Yeah, no way that wacko could take you out. But I just, uh, I wanted to say it’s okay if you’re not. Okay that is. It’s okay if you’re mad about it. But just because we didn’t totally stop VILE doesn’t mean we didn’t still do some good here. You know?” 

Carmen had stopped scrubbing, then. It was quiet as it had been before, with only the faint buzzing of the rainforest outside and the drip of bloody water from the washcloth into the bucket. 

There was that argument again, that she somehow hadn’t failed these people by losing their entire stock. It didn’t exactly feel like a win when she knew they would get no money this year, and far less than usual next year. It felt a whole lot like failure when she knew VILE would not only make a fortune off of these hardworking people but would also ruin the market long-term with their garbage imitation products. 

Carmen hadn’t had the energy to get confrontational about it though. She’d just forced a smile and avoided the question. “You should probably go save your brother, I bet he’s already trying to sneak bits of food from the pan and Felana doesn’t seem like the type to mess around.” For a moment Ivy had seemed like she might turn around to face Carmen fully, but she stopped herself at the last second and slipped out the door with a quiet agreement instead. 

As soon as the door had latched shut, the wall that had been teetering inside her chest since first seeing Gray that morning had finally crumbled. Her hands clasped over her mouth and she’d taken several heaving, shaking breaths as she waited for Ivy’s footsteps to disappear down the hall. Thankful, for once, for the training that kept her quiet as she broke down. 

The feeling of tears tracking down her cheeks again brought Carmen back to the present. At some point she’d stopped her pacing near the bed. She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, lost in thought. She turned around to look at the fine wooden furniture and elegant decorations of the room Player had booked for them, so different from the cramped little house in the middle of nowhere that she’d slept in the previous night. But she’d preferred it, she thought, she’d take Solofo’s cramped home that smelled like frying onions and all of Felana’s mismatched bowls over the empty grandeur of the South African hotel any day. 

She still couldn’t believe _they_ had been trying to comfort **her**. Solofo had insisted between bites of stir fried noodles that they’d had worse. That the other farms would help Andry, the man who owned the land the coalition used, and that their coalition would survive thanks to her. Zack and Ivy had agreed, saying if she’d left to save the beans then there might not have been anyone left alive in the west orchard and there certainly wouldn’t have been any vines left on the trees. 

Carmen understood the point they were making, even then she’d seen the logic of their argument, but it still felt wrong to think that they’d done a good job when she knew the three of them would get on a plane in the morning and fly to some new fantastic location while the farmers were stuck filling in tunnels and cutting back their ruined stock. They probably wouldn’t even know the true extent of the damage for weeks and Carmen felt like a coward at her relief that she wouldn’t be there to watch their gratitude turn to despair, or even resentment. 

Her phone buzzed, dragging her attention back again. 

It was Zack, asking if she wanted anything specific from the hotel’s breakfast buffet. 

She texted a quick negative and went back to the small table near the window. She pulled the chair back upright and made to sit down again, only then noticing the tea that had sloshed out of the cup when she’d stood so suddenly. It ran down the side of the tall white mug and pooled in the saucer. A murky puddle that dripped when she lifted the mug out of its setting. 

The thought of throwing out all decorum and sipping the spilled beverage straight out of the saucer crossed her mind. No one was watching, and if it saved her a trip to the kitchenette for towels then she didn’t see a reason not to. All the more enticing, really. She would have done it if she was still back on the Isle of VILE. 

Which was perhaps why she didn’t do it now. 

Carmen set the mug back into the saucer and carried the whole mess to the other end of the room where a coffee machine and electric tea kettle stood on a black marble counter. A little basket of paper napkins sat next to them with a small pile of chocolates on top. Carmen found herself admiring the way the colorful cellophane and foil wrappers glittered as she moved them one by one. Turning them like cut gemstones in the diffused light from the window. 

She was still facing away when she heard the click and whir of the electric lock on her door opening. 

She shifted slightly, centering her weight over her feet, and watched the distorted reflection of the door in the shiny stone surface of the countertop. One hand reached toward the handle of the kettle while the other curled into a fist at her side. 

The probability of the visitor being anyone other than one of the siblings was low, especially someone coming in through the door with a key, but it was never nonzero. 

“Okay boss, I know you said you didn’t want anything but they had a big basket of these weird square biscotti cookies so I brought up a bunch of them.” 

Carmen relaxed at the sound of Zack’s enthusiastic recounting of the breakfast options the hotel offered. She mopped up the spilled tea quickly and dropped the wet napkins in the little hotel wastebasket before turning around with a smile. 

“I hope you didn’t fill up too much on eggs and bacon. Player said he had some news for us and I would hate for you to fall asleep and miss it.” 

“Okay that was one time! And can you blame me? It was corned beef hash at a real greasy spoon! I had to go in for seconds!” 

Ivy chimed in from where she was leaning her chair back at the table, “More like fifths. It was disgusting to watch.” 

“When it comes to corned beef hash, two plates is one serving.” 

“That still makes it going in for thirds, idiot.” 

Carmen grabbed her backpack on the way to the table, slinging it over the back of the chair and pulling out her computer before sitting down next to Ivy. “Regardless of what happened then, we’d all better pay attention now.” 

Zack nodded mock seriousness and arranged himself to sit properly in the chair. He wasn’t able to maintain the charade for long, however, and quickly snatched one of the large biscuits from the plate he’d brought back while they waited for Player’s video-chat app to load on Carmen’s laptop. 

Player picked up on the second ring. “ _Hallo vrienden_!” 

“ _Guzuntight_.” Ivy tilted her head understandingly at the screen. 

Carmen laughed softly, “ _Ik wist niet dat je Nederlands sprak._ ” 

Player smiled and crossed his arms proudly, “ _Dank u wel_. I assume what you just said was ‘wow Player, your Dutch is very good.’” 

“I said ‘I didn’t know you spoke Dutch.’” 

“Huh. I guess my ‘thank you’ doesn’t make very much sense then. Well, I’m not the one who needs to speak the language, because it’s you three who are headed to the Netherlands. I’ve been getting pings from my network about increased VILE presence in and around Amsterdam and I was able to decrypt some files on the drive that corroborate that location.” 

“Amsterdam?” Zack paused in his attempt to get his mouth around the biscuit, “What’s up there that’s worth stealing?” 

Player brought up several smaller windows on the screen showing picturesque views of the city. “You actually make a good point Zack, most of what Amsterdam is famous for isn’t exactly easy or worthwhile to steal.” 

Carmen watched with concern as Zack triumphantly located an ideal chomping spot on the biscuit. “Yeah. Windmills, canals, bicycles...hey Zack? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” 

Zack bit down with the zeal of a dog snapping a treat out of the air. 

“YEOWCH!” 

He dropped the confection to clutch at his mouth, gingerly probing with his tongue to make sure all his teeth were intact. The biscuit hit the table with a solid ‘thunk’ and bounced a few times without losing a single crumb. 

Ivy howled with laughter as Carmen picked a biscuit of her own from the plate. “Sorry, I should have warned you sooner. These aren’t biscotti cookies, they’re rusks! Lightly sweetened bread that’s baked twice to remove all the moisture. They’re similar to biscotti but,” she knocked the bread on the table a couple of times, “they’re hard as rocks until you dip them in tea or coffee.” 

“What kind of monster would make a cookie like that?” Zack whimpered, pushing the plate away from him. 

Carmen dipped the rusk into her tea and spoke while the bread softened, “They’re not cookies at all. Rusks are a favorite food of South Africans and have been for hundreds of years, from way back when they were used as rations for long journeys.” 

She nibbled at her snack as Ivy menaced her brother with the biscuits across the table. 

Player tried to get them back on track. “As I was saying, most of what makes Amsterdam famous is impossible to steal. But one more very important thing they’re known for is art, which can be very lucrative to sell and is relatively easy to collect.” 

Paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh popped up on the screen around his head. “There are a lot of artists with ties to the Netherlands. We should look into the museums around there or see if there are any special exhibitions that may be held there soon.” 

Carmen nodded, “A museum job, huh? Those are always fun.” 

Zack piped up from the headlock Ivy had him trapped in, “Who do you think they’ll send this time? Looks like that Crackle guy is back from whatever vacation he was on, do you think he’ll be waiting for us there?” 

Carmen froze briefly where she had the last bite of rusk dipped into her mug. She recovered quickly, answering without looking up. “No, art heists were never his thing. It’s a specialty field that Gray wasn’t trained in. I don’t think you’ll have met anyone that VILE decides to send.” 

It had actually been somewhat of a sore spot for Gray, to have not been chosen for Countess Cleo’s special classes on the subject. He hadn’t wanted to be pigeonholed into the art scene like the ones who were chosen tended to be, but still the rejection had stung. Carmen looked up to see Ivy watching her with an assessing stare. Maybe her recovery hadn’t been as smooth as she’d hoped. 

Zack wriggled out of the hold and fell back into his chair. “Player! Remember that time we were in Rome and you helped me hotwire a bulldozer to fight the bulldozer that Crackle had also hotwired? That was wicked awesome, we should do that again!” 

“Hey Carm.” Player’s answer faded into the background as Carmen focused on what Ivy had to say. The redhead had her elbow leaned on the table and was looking at Carmen with an unimpressed raised eyebrow. 

“Yes?” 

“How come you don’t call Crackle by his code name? You do it for all the other VILE mooks, weren’t they all your friends before? Why does he get the special treatment?” 

Carmen blinked in surprise, somehow that hadn’t been the question she was expecting. “I call him by his name because he asked me to. Once. I guess it’s just a habit now.” 

Ivy looked disappointed by that answer. “Well, are you gonna start calling him Crackle? You know, since he’s back and more VILE than ever?” 

Carmen didn’t have an answer to that. She looked down into her tea as the last of the rusk crumbs sank below the surface. 

It hadn’t been a lie when she’d said Gray had asked her to call him by his name rather than his code name, but there was more to the story that she hadn’t revealed. She didn’t like hiding things from her friends. She knew Ivy at least would understand if she tried to explain. But something about the shrewd look in her eyes when she had asked made Carmen instinctively draw back, keeping this bit of information close to the chest. It was one of her more treasured memories, one she was reluctant to offer up for scrutiny. 

Shortly after everyone was allowed to choose their code names, Gray had pulled her aside and asked that she still call him by his real name. He’d said it was because they were friends, and friends didn’t keep secrets between them. 

He’d looked at her expectantly, and she’d known then that this was yet another ploy to get her to reveal her real name. When she’d called him on it, he’d laughed and admitted to his scheming. But then he’d surprised her by asking again if she would call him Gray rather than Crackle, saying with a wink, “You know I’ve never thought much of my name but I like it a lot when you say it.” 

Carmen knew why the code name rule was necessary, but she also knew it was impossible to fully enforce and growing up she’d heard every class break it for every dumb reason under the sun. When she was young she’d delighted in tattling on the students who broke the rules, when she got older she liked to blackmail them for whatever interesting thing they might have on them or could get her from off the island. When she met Gray she became one of them without a second thought. It had felt excitingly secretive, like they were their own little club. And even though she didn’t have a name to tell him in return, he’d made her feel at least a little understood. A girl without a name and a boy who rejected his. She’d savored the rebellious feeling of saying it, and the pleased little grin he’d get whenever he heard it from her lips. 

After Morocco she’d tried referring to him as Crackle, but it had never stuck. He could only ever be Gray: her best friend, Gray: who betrayed her, Gray: her clever antagonist. She wondered what that made him now. 

After a little while, Ivy gave up on the conversation and joined her brother in reminiscing about past misadventures with the electric Aussie. Carmen knew her silence was damning, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She was still trying to untangle everything in her own head, she certainly wasn’t ready to have a conversation about it. 

She didn’t talk about her past often, it was embarrassing how long it had taken her to realize that stealing was wrong and that VILE really was evil. But that also meant that her friends didn’t know anything meaningful about her childhood and previous relationships. Player knew a little, but to a certain extent, Carmen found she was still proud to keep VILE’s secrets. The line between not telling because the knowledge was dangerous and not telling because her family trusted her not to was still blurry for her. She was ashamed of that as well. 

She remembered how Gray had seemed so different when she’d seen him at the gate. She wondered if he was feeling conflicted too. Carmen knew she was prone to trusting too easily, but she meant what she said to him on the train a year ago. She wanted him on her side. She missed him, more than she thought she would and more than she wanted to. Had he been acting the way he had because he finally realized that VILE didn’t care about anything or anyone? Had he been trying to do the right thing within his limited capacities? His anger resonated with the part of her that was still in turmoil from what happened in Morocco, but he had been the one to cause those feelings when he was willing to be complicit in VILE’s cold-blooded policies. 

She must be projecting her feelings onto him, she thought. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that Tigress had just been more annoying than usual that day and he’d been irritated by that rather than by any moral quandaries. If he hadn’t understood the depths of VILE on his first mission then it was unlikely that he was suddenly grappling with it now. 

And to be honest, she kind of hoped he wasn’t bothered by it. Some small bitter part of her hoped he was still evil even though the thought of it felt like mildew growing on her heart. It was so much easier to boil down their relationship to ‘he was always evil, I just couldn’t always see it’ rather than having to face the idea that maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough to convince him to leave with her. She knew it wasn’t her job to save him. That he was an adult who made his own decisions, who saw just as much of VILE’s darkness as she did and chose to stay anyway. But she still ached at the memory of that one moment on the train. When the glamour of a jewel heist had dimmed and the thrill of the chase was gone, when it was just Carmen and Gray alone in a train compartment, and he hadn’t loved her enough to leave VILE behind. 

Carmen reached into her bag where it hung on the chair and pulled out her matryoshka dolls to fidget with. The fine grain of the wood was always soothing under her fingertips, especially at the charred boundary where it turned slightly rougher. She knew the shape of the scar by heart. 

As she turned it over in her hands she listened to the quiet thumping from inside. She opened the dolls carefully, twisting them and stacking the outer two back into one another so she was left with the third inner doll. She swirled it in her hand like a wine glass, feeling for the lopsided weight inside with a wry smile. 

It had taken her a while to open the dolls after getting them back from the private collection in Poitiers. She’d been on the lam for a week straight avoiding Interpol and VILE so it wasn’t until she’d finally had a moment of peace, several days booked in a bed and breakfast in Rothenburg Germany, that she’d opened the dolls to find only three instead of the usual four. 

Gray had kept the smallest one. 

She distinctly remembered the emotional vertigo she’d felt staring into the little wooden base and seeing only a rock taped down where the littlest doll should have been. At the time she couldn’t tell if she should laugh or cry. It was a classic bait and switch just as Professor Maelstrom had taught them. There was no note, but it had felt undoubtedly like a threat that he would set another trap for her. That maybe he already had. 

She removed the tape and checked the whole set over again for trackers, but hadn’t found any. She’d intended to get rid of the stone but as soon as she’d picked it up she’d found herself fascinated by it instead. Rolling it around in her fingers, feeling it’s smooth, surf-worn sides, she’d been struck with the image of him combing the beaches of VILE Island for the perfect replacement for the doll. His broad shoulders hunched in concentration, hair disheveled from the ocean breeze, meticulously weighing each rock he picked up. She wondered if he’d been excited at this secret final step of his plan, if he’d been sorry to let the dolls go, or maybe just grimly determined to bring her back. Ultimately Carmen had settled for tossing the tape but keeping the stone, a rattling reminder to be on her guard. 

But a year had passed with no traps or attempts at blackmail, or any communication at all. She’d begun to think perhaps he’d simply been unwilling to let go of her. It was possible he’d known that Poitiers would be their last meeting for a long time and that, even after everything that happened, maybe he still wanted one tiny thing to remember her by. 

‘Once a thief, always a thief.’ she thought as she put the matryoshka back together and slipped it back into her pack. 

She hoped he hadn’t gotten rid of the little doll in the meanwhile. Even if it sat dusty and forgotten somewhere in one of his many tool-kits, she hoped he still had it. 

Carmen finished her tea and slipped unnoticed back into the conversation at the table, which had since evolved into a discussion on whether or not it was possible to steal a satellite from orbit. Ivy was firmly against the idea, Zack was for it. Player was trying to work out the math and both siblings were claiming him for their side. Carmen made eye contact with him and gestured towards the other two- who had now stood up to yell in each other’s faces - with a confused look. Player shrugged. 

“Okay, okay. Let’s uh, table this discussion for another day.” Carmen gently pushed the twins back into their chairs. “Player, what’s the time frame on the Amsterdam situation?” 

“Looks like it’s not until next week at the earliest. That’s when the first hotel reservations show up in the data logs.” 

“Perfect. Do we want to leave now and get a head start? Or should we stick around South Africa for a little while first?” 

Ivy sat up in her seat excitedly, “Ooh! I want to go to a wild animal park before we leave!” 

Carmen turned to Zack who was still eyeing the plate of rusks distrustfully. “Zack? What do you think?” He looked up with a pout. “The cookies are mean here, I want to go to Amsterdam and stuff my face with stroopwafels instead.” 

Carmen laughed. She’d expected nothing else from the two of them. “Okay then. Player, can you book us a stay at a park tomorrow? We’ll spend three days there and then we’ll leave the next morning.” 

"You got it, Red."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, trying to apply logic to VILE's school system: I'm booboo the fool (pathetically jingles across the stage)
> 
> I think it's a safe bet that if you've made it this far then you are a fan of introspection but just in case, warning: there will be more of these stream of consciousness style chapters.


	5. 2018, VILE Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahahaha, oh man. Oh no. The dang show ended before I updated. Sorry y'all.
> 
> Anyway, I've gone back and fixed the old chapters because it turns out Zack and Ivy aren't twins. Yikes, you'd think I'd do my research about that kind of stuff before starting something like this. Also I changed the timeline very slightly so that VILE Academy lasts 2 years instead of 1. This changes nothing except now I guess everyone has an associate's degree in crime.

Part 1.5: Howl

The alarm on Gray’s watch went off at 6am, as it did every morning, and he hit the snooze button until 6:30. As he did every morning.

He sat up in bed and stared at his empty bedside table - contemplating how royally screwed up his internal clock was for a luxurious five minutes - before getting up to shower, shave, and get dressed for breakfast which was always served from 7:00 - 7:30. 

And, same as every morning for the past three weeks, when he returned from the bathroom there was a handwritten note sitting on his nightstand that definitely hadn’t been there before.

He looked at his door with a subdued feeling of betrayal. He had installed two new locks on the door last night - bringing the count up to seven - and he’d stacked his toolkits in front of it, but somehow Shadowsan had made it and out of his room during the ten minutes he was occupied without making a sound or leaving any trace.

‘Typical.’ Gray looked to the window on the other side of the room, also bolted down with five different locks and not a shutter out of place.

The note was, as always, a list of which classes he was assigned that day. Unusual only in the amount. Today he would attend lessons with all four Faculty members whereas normally he would only see two or three.

There was hardly any pattern to which classes he had. His schedules seemed determined primarily by which instructors were willing to put up with him on any given day. Coach Brunt was basically a given, and he saw Dr. Bellum every day that she was on the island. Professor Maelstrom liked to see him a couple times a week though rarely consecutively, Shadowsan didn’t seem to use anything even remotely resembling a schedule, and he was never officially assigned classes with Countess Cleo.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t watching, however. Sometimes he thought the Countess saw more of him than any of the others.

The schedule for the day listed evil therapy with Professor Maelstrom first, from 8am to 10, then gym class with Coach Brunt until 12. After that was a 30 minute lunch break, then ostensibly he would learn about nano-scale computation with Dr. Bellum until 3, though he knew from experience that by the time he got to the lab there was no telling what projects she would have moved on to. Lastly he would have another two hour lesson with Shadowsan before being released for the day.

Gray absentmindedly folded the paper between his fingers, looking out through the shaded window of his private room. Even if the whole idea of privacy was a joke as apparently the Faculty had no qualms about coming and going as they pleased, he’d never been given an official reason for his upgraded living quarters. He sort of just assumed it was to prevent him from contaminating the new recruits with his failure stink. If they saw him in the communal dorms every day but never in their classes they might start asking questions, might start thinking that they didn’t need to be so careful in the field if the punishment was just to be grounded on the island. They might even start doubting the Faculty’s authority.

And they certainly couldn’t have that.

He very deliberately didn’t think about the little holes in the walls that had clearly once held up maps and posters.

Gray checked his watch to see how much time he had left before breakfast. The jagged paper between his fingers caught his eye, and he realized he was nearly halfway through folding the origami sheep model that Shadowsan had drilled into his head years ago.

He crunched the paper up in his fist and threw it away.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a spectacularly average breakfast, Gray headed into Maelstrom’s dim classroom. He made sure to be five minutes early as he’d arrived exactly on time the first day of his remedial lessons and had been immediately berated by the professor for it. He could still hear the derision in the old man’s voice, “Early is on time, and on time is late. It’s a wonder you ever graduated at all with such lax personal standards.”

Maelstrom was sitting at his desk in the corner of the room, backlit by the enormous glowing fish tank that took up a full wall. He was reading some papers when Gray came in, and didn’t look up until Gray sat down in the antique wooden armchair across from him.

The two of them sat in silence. Gray kept his eyes on the professor, though each gentle sway of the jellyfish behind him threatening to pull his attention away. Professor Maelstrom watched him with folded hands and infinite patience. 

Minutes ticked past. Gray felt the grain of the wood under his fingertips, the way his feet rested - misaligned - against the plush rug. He kept his breathing steady. He couldn’t allow even the idea of a sigh or a yawn to pass through him.

He’d sat down off-center in an intentionally relaxed pose that now felt stiff and awkward. His shoulders were tight, and his weight leaning on one arm of the chair was starting to put his elbow to sleep. But he could hold the position for hours more if needed. An unfortunate hazard of the job was that sometimes you got stuck in weird places or poses and simply had to wait it out. They’d been trained on this, and he’d been feigning nonchalance his whole life.

Gray watched Maelstrom watching him, and thought about nothing.

Finally, after nearly ten minutes, Professor Maelstrom put his hands down on the table. “How has your week been going, Crackle?”

Gray smirked and straightened in his seat. He’d won this round.

He’d probably pay for it soon enough, but it was worth it even if the old man wouldn’t admit or acknowledge it. Maelstrom loved leaving students to stew in their own thoughts. He frequently left large gaps of silence in conversations just to watch them squirm with uncertainty. Gray, with his easy-going personality, had never been as vulnerable to the trick as some others but even he’d rushed to fill the void a few times at the beginning and had given up precious information as a result.

Now, though, he knew what game they were playing and he knew how to win. There was no concern about whether his personal unease would show on his face if all he was thinking about was the ambient temperature of the room. Shadowsan had taught him that, though he was fairly sure this wasn’t the intended application of the lesson.

“Ah, you know. Can’t complain.” Gray began casually after an appropriate pause of his own, “Though not for lack of trying. Do we even have an HR department here? Not sure that’s entirely above the board, mate.”

Maelstrom blinked slowly, unimpressed. “Still using humor to deflect, I see. How juvenile.”

He pulled out a slim file from a drawer on his desk and rifled through the papers.

“Luckily I took the initiative and spoke with the other Faculty members about how you have been progressing. Coach Brunt and Shadowsan both report that you are barely meeting the minimum requirements for their classes. Dr. Bellum has said you are doing well as her assistant but that you lack the enthusiasm she had come to expect from you, as one of her previously star pupils. Countess Cleo tells me she has observed you acting unusually quiet. Morose, was the specific word she used.”

Professor Maelstrom snapped the folder shut and stared Gray down. “I must admit I am disappointed to hear these things, Crackle. Is there something occupying your thoughts? Perhaps I could help to alleviate any concerns you may have.”

Gray shrugged, letting his short fingernails tap on the arm of the chair. “You know? Nothing comes to mind.”

The older man sighed and put the folder down. He stood slowly and walked around his seat to stand in front of the fish tank, its blue light washing over his sickly pale features. “I will never understand your dedication to appearing as the dumbest man on the planet. Very well, let’s run through my theory then. Could it be your lingering obsession with Carmen Sandiego that is causing you to fail at even these basic assignments? Surely you aren’t still pining away for that traitorous woman?”

Gray felt his breath hitch ever so slightly, his eyes met Maelstrom’s in the reflection of the glass wall. The professor looked pleased with himself and Gray wondered if this was his swift punishment for not falling for the trap earlier, or if this had been today’s plan all along. The old man wasn’t usually so direct in his accusations.

Gray frowned, recovering quickly. “Aren’t you the ones who told me my whole reason for living is to take her down? I’d say I’m fairly justified in thinking about her sometimes on that alone.”

“True, you exist to apprehend her. However, I worry that you are not simply thinking about her, but are instead consumed by the very idea of her. She was your dear friend once. And now she is your enemy. These are impassioned roles for anyone to take in your life, much less the same person playing both parts. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, sure. I guess. It’s a bit of a weird situation to be in.” Gray intended to keep arguing his point that the odd circumstances were only what the VILE Faculty had purposefully made them to be, but Maelstrom cut him off.

“Do you believe Carmen Sandiego ever really cared for you? Bear with me a moment on this tangent. Do you really think she had your best interests at heart at any point in your friendship?"

Gray pressed his tongue against the sharp edge of his teeth in an effort to keep his mouth shut. He knew the professor was trying to rile him up, but he couldn’t help the anger that rose to the bait. Couldn’t help the cold shock of recognition that went through him, like a drop of water falling into a still pool, when the subject of his genuine fear was so casually breached.

Professor Maelstrom continued, “Think back to your time together, here on the island. No matter how many times you asked, did she ever tell you the truth about where she came from? It wasn’t a secret, she could have told you at any point. But perhaps you gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she was ashamed of her history or had some tragic tale that you would have to wheedle out of her. You became her friend because she made you think she was nothing more than a friendly chatterbox, but when she played her pranks, you were the one to take the fall.”

Gray leaned forward in his seat, his subdued anger jumping up to his mouth before he could stop it. “Now hold on! She didn’t ask me to do that! I didn’t, it’s not like that was a habit or anything!”

He remembered that moment distinctly. The silly water balloon prank and the near instant consequences. She had been so afraid, then, that she would be held back from her dream. He’d stepped in because she needed him to, not because she’d asked or because he’d felt like he’d had anything to prove.

He remembered that. He knew he did. Whatever Carmen Sandiego had become in the meanwhile, Black Sheep had never been a liar.

He wouldn’t let VILE take that memory from him.

Maelstrom ignored his outburst. “When you fought her after she left, did she try to talk to you? If she so believes in her virtuous mission to destroy her former home, did she ever really make any effort at all to bring you, her closest friend, to her side?”

“I mean, sometimes it seemed like she was maybe-”

Professor Maelstrom turned to face him again. “When you fought her on the train do you really think she didn’t know she was leaving you to die? Carmen Sandiego, who grew up in the very heart of VILE, is it even conceivable that she wouldn’t know what happens to operatives who are captured?”

Gray didn’t answer.

“And yet she left you there, wrapped up in her own coat like a christmas present for the police. Are these the actions of a friend? Or is it more likely that she followed the protocols she had been immersed in since childhood and used you to plan a potential escape route should the need arise. She was quite aggressive towards you upon first meeting, was she not? But she came over to your side rather quickly once you extended the olive branch. Perhaps that is because you are so very charming that you drew her in through sheer goodwill alone. But equally likely, I should think, is the possibility that she saw what a willfully blind idiot you are and decided that you could be of use to her.

“You would do well to remember this, Crackle. Carmen Sandiego is not your friend and she never was. It is your job to take her down and you cannot do that if you are preoccupied with thoughts of what might have been.”

Gray remained quiet, though the chair creaked under the tension of his arms and fists.

He knew what Maelstrom was doing. Just like before, this was nothing more than another attempt to get him off-kilter. To get him upset and doubting himself.

It wouldn’t work. His memories were the one thing he could be sure of. Whatever else happened since the last time they were all together, whatever she felt for him now and whatever this suffocating cloud was that hung around him at all times was, he knew what they’d felt then.

It was as simple as it was tragic. Black Sheep had been his friend. And now she was his enemy.

The professor watched with insufferable schadenfreude as Gray’s ire turned inward.

While he didn’t imagine her as some vindictive mastermind who had played him for a fool and left him to die, he wasn’t above blaming her for everything that had happened since. It was her fault that he was in this mess. Whether or not she knew what she was doing - whether or not she even cared anymore - she was being selfish and idiotic in her pursuit of world peace or justice or whatever the hell she was searching for these days. 

No one escaped VILE. Black Sheep was only prolonging the inevitable by running and fighting. If she was smart, she would give herself up and hope for leniency. 

Well. If she was smart she never would have run in the first place. But they were well beyond that now.

If there was one thing he knew for certain about Black Sheep it was that she wasn’t stupid. The only explanation that made sense to him was that her newly discovered morals were blinding her to the obvious, dulling her instincts and keeping her from seeing the whole picture.

VILE would find her eventually, with or without him. And the longer she made them wait, the worse it would be for her.

Professor Maelstrom was transparent in his attempt to turn Gray against Black Sheep. As much as Gray thought she was a moron for her current career choice, he didn’t hate her. He didn’t think he was capable of that, and he honestly didn’t think she hated him either.

He doubted she thought much about him at all.

While he’d been trapped in the maze of his own thoughts, the professor had moved back to sit at his desk. He jarred Gray from his circuitous thoughts by shoving a clipboard inches from his face.

“Now that the pleasantries are out of the way,” he didn’t smile but Gray could hear the eagerness in his voice, “I have a few worksheets for you to complete. Do pay attention to the fine print at the top, some of them are timed.”

Gray allowed himself the minor subordination of rolling his eyes. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coach Brunt was doing push-ups at the front of the gym when Gray arrived. As soon as he stepped foot on the shiny hardwood floor, she heaved her considerable mass upright and grinned at him.

“Well! I was beginning to think you weren’t coming!”

Gray glanced at his watch. He was thirty seconds late.

“Ah, I’m just kidding. Get over here and start your warm up kiddo.” Coach Brunt clapped her hands together to brush off whatever dirt was on them. She wandered over to the racks of fighting equipment and perused the options while Gray stretched.

Of all the changes between his original school time at the academy and his current situation, Brunt was by far the most unexpected. While he’d been a normal student she’d paid little to no attention to him. If he performed well in her class he might get a firm slap on the back, and if he did poorly she’d always been more than happy to put him on the spot. At every other time, though, there only seemed to be a vague static of dislike between them.

She’d clearly favored Black Sheep, and after Poitiers he was finally able to put the pieces together. As Black Sheep’s mother figure, Coach Brunt had likely seen him as a potential boyfriend. A corrupting influence on her little girl even here amongst the wolves of society, and a reminder that children grow up and change and leave. She’d reacted as any evil helicopter parent might.

But now? 

“Let’s start off with a good old fashioned fist fight. I’m not really in the mood for nun-chucks or anything like that, you?”

Now he really didn’t know what to make of her.

“A brawl’s fine by me, see if you can keep up.” Gray pushed up the sleeves of his jumpsuit and took his place in the sparring ring in the middle of the room. 

There weren’t any boundaries around it, and no safety mats either. Only painted lines on the pine wood floor. Fighters had to stay aware of the edges at all times or else Coach would call an out-of-bounds and give a point to their opponent.

Just because she was his opponent today didn’t mean she wouldn’t still make that call.

He shook out his arms, bringing his fists up to just below his eyes as Coach Brunt stepped into the ring.

Gray struck first. 

He dashed forward towards Brunt.

She grinned and took a few steps of her own.

He dodged the club of her giant fist as it aimed for his face, jumping back slightly and skipping sideways out of range.

Coach Brunt swung again at his head.

Gray twisted his shoulders and head out of her arm’s trajectory. He brought his arm up and around in an overhand strike to catch her forward momentum but her guard-hand slapped his fist away. He dropped down and scampered of range again, narrowly avoiding being pinned to her massive bulk.

Coach Brunt laughed. “You’re a slippery one, I'll give you that! But you’re predictable.”

Gray stayed light on his feet, dodging and redirecting her strikes while he waited for an opening.

There! He saw it. Brunt stepped forward but didn’t put her full weight on her front leg, expecting him to feint around her side.

He darted in and kicked out to knock her knee out from under her.

In the split second it took to make his decision and get his leg off the ground, Brunt shifted forwards and whipped her back leg into his rib cage.

Gray hit the ground and rolled, dragging his palms across the floor to keep from going out of bounds.

He curled his feet up under him and jumped back up as soon as possible. Coach delighted in pressing her advantage over a grounded opponent. Even if she didn’t seem particularly inclined this time, he didn’t want to get into the habit of resting during a fight.

“Ha HA! What did I just tell you? Saw that coming a mile away!” Brunt boomed from her side of the ring.

Gray panted, trying to breathe deeply despite the pain. He glared at her, his mind scrambling to find any weak points against her.

‘Everyone’s predictable when you’re a bloody tank.’ He thought as he ran in again.

Coach Brunt charged as well, tightening her shoulders in preparation to punch at him again.

Gray ducked under the first strike instead of dodging away. He was dangerously close but when she leaned in to grab at him he brought his arms up and clapped his hands over her ears as hard as he could.

Brunt fumbled her grip on his shoulders, stunned, and shook her head to try and get her bearings. Gray spun one arm around hers, trapping her wrist to his side and pulling her down off-balance.

He knew he didn’t have much time before she would be back at full capacity, he had to act fast. Gray yanked his other arm back and landed two quick jabs to her face.

Brunt bellowed and before he could disentangle himself she pulled him close, lifting him easily with her one trapped arm and throwing him down onto the floor. She followed as he fell, smashing into his chest with one huge palm and holding him down as he struggled vainly.

Blood dripped slowly from her nose onto the pale gold floor beside his head.

“Now that’s more like it, pretty boy.” Coach grinned, giving him one last shove into the ground before standing up and walking away.

Gray rolled over onto his knees, taking a quick moment to curl around his aching chest before standing up fully.

The enormous woman was admiring a rack of ranged weapons along the back wall when she spoke again, calling over her shoulder, “Those’re the kind of moves you’re gonna need to bring back our lost lambkins!” 

Gray heaved to catch his breath. He’d bitten his tongue when he fell and the iron tang of blood clung to the back of his throat.

Coach settled on bo staffs, a personal favorite of hers, and tossed one over to him without looking. Gray caught it easily. He swirled it through the air as he left the wrestling ring, getting a feel for the weight of it before he had to fight.

He’d always been good with long range weapons like this, ones that relied less on brute strength and more on points of leverage. He vastly preferred his crackle rods to staffs but these would do. Even against Coach Brunt he was sure he could win if he was just smart enough.

As long as he was smart about it, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t win.

Brunt returned with a staff of her own. “You gotta be strong to bring her back, ‘cause she’s gonna fight it. And I trained that girl myself since she wasn't knee high to a grasshopper. Once she’s set her mind to something she’ll go at it full force. But you’re the one who will make her see reason. I know you will.”

Yes. Even that he could do. If he was just smart enough. Strong enough.

Coach struck first this time, her staff whistling through the air as it came down in an overhead arc.

Gray braced both hands at the base of his staff and blocked her attack. The wood reverberated painfully in his hands. He twisted to slide her staff from his but Brunt pulled hers back to ready another strike.

He recognized this one, he would need to parry over his right shoulder when she moved in with a diagonal slash. If he turned to catch it straight on he would be leaving most of his body unguarded. But the angle was such that he would risk his staff being knocked out of his hands if he didn’t.

Brunt was coming at him fast.

Gray lowered his staff to a basic guard position and quickly stepped back instead, her weapon just barely missing the tip of his nose. 

Coach used her momentum to swing back at him from the left now, lower this time. 

He blocked again. This time he was able to complete his form and he slipped his staff down the length of hers until he could leverage against her weight. Gray twisted his left arm up and forced her staff to raise enough that he could duck under it.

He jumped forward, slamming his bo staff into her abdomen.

Coach Brunt let out a sharp “OOF” and hunched slightly. She slid her foot so that it was nearly behind him and pushed forward against his retreating staff. She swung hers one handed to try and catch him across his upper back but he ducked under it, retreating to a safe distance.

They both turned to face each other at a starting position once again.

Coach grinned again, “You know if you’d used even half this much skill on that train we wouldn’t be stuck here going through this whole rigamarole.” As she spoke she jabbed out at him, trying to catch him in the ribs.

Gray dodged quickly to block her again. He forced a grin himself. “Is that right? Cheers mate, I’d nearly forgotten.”

Brunt stepped forward to lock their staffs together near their grip. Her massive frame bearing down against him. 

Gray let one of his feet slide back to brace against the force in a lunge. 

Coach’s face was less than a foot away. “Look kid, you’ve got potential! If you just make up your mind to do it, I know you could bring her back to where she belongs!”

Brunt twisted her arm up, her staff angling down sharply to smack him upside the head. 

Gray hissed at the sudden pain. He knocked her staff away with his and struck out at her as she continued to speak.

“Black Sheep is just confused, that’s all.” He scored a hit on her hip. “She’s rebellious! Always has been!” Her staff slapped against his shoulder. “She’s just trying out new things, but what she needs is to be home with her family.”

Coach parried his next attack and jabbed him harshly in the sternum, “Don’t you think so?”

Gray grunted, nearly collapsing and barely resisting raising a hand to grab at the spot that he could already feel bruising. It was hard enough to fight the massive woman when he wasn’t expected to talk back, much less delve into his current emotional quagmire. 

He caught her next attack with an upward swing, spinning her staff away and stepping in close to try and land a few fast strikes. 

Did Brunt really think Black Sheep needed to come back for her own well-being? From what he’d seen in the field, Lambkins was doing better than ever now that she was free from them.

Gray dodged a meaty fist but didn’t quite make it out of the way fast enough to avoid the stick. Coach Brunt’s staff caught the end of his and nearly sent it flying. He turned his momentum into a roundhouse kick to Coach’s ribs.

Brunt immediately smashed her elbow into his chest in automatic retaliation. The sheer mass of it easily knocked him off balance. He managed to scramble out of Brunt’s path though, again, the ferocious gym teacher didn’t seem inclined to chase him down. She twisted the bo staff in her hands and Gray could see the wood flexing under the strain.

Coach Brunt fixed him with an uncharacteristically heartfelt look from across the ring. “Black Sheep needs to come back to her family. To the people who love her. That’s you too, Crackle. Ain’t it?”

Gray’s brain stuttered over her statement. 

Was it him too?

Brunt used his fleeting distraction to attack.

She swung her staff parallel to the floor at his abdomen. Gray parried and aimed for her neck, the two of them trading blows without speaking. 

What the hell was with this line of interrogation? Wasn’t the Faculty meant to be working together to set him against Black Sheep? It was well known that Brunt and Maelstrom didn’t see eye to eye, was this some weird mutiny on Coach’s part?

Coach landed a sharp strike to his leg. 

Shit. He needed to focus.

Brunt spoke again, “She betrayed you just as much as she betrayed us.”

Well, that they could agree on.

Their staffs cracked loudly where they met. Coach emphasized her statements with stabs and swings as she advanced. “Black Sheep is about a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she still took you down in a minute flat.”

The two of them clashed again in the center of the room and this time he heard the sharp snap of wood beginning to splinter. There was a thin crack just above where Brunt held her staff.

She kept speaking. “Now I’ve never been one for gambling, but I’d bet my best track suit that she only won so easy because you didn’t want to fight her. And while that’s very gentlemanly of you...”

Gray landed a hit on her shoulder but she didn’t even flinch, only retaliated with a hit of her own just above his hip.

The wood flexed and began to splinter in her hands.

‘There’s no way she didn’t feel that!’ Gray though as he jumped back from her next attack. But Coach kept coming at him as he retreated closer and closer to the wood paneled wall.

He ducked under her next swing, trying to slip past her and get back to the open space in the middle of the gym.

Brunt caught him with a hard kick to the stomach. He stumbled back even further. There wasn’t space to swing the bo staff this close to the wall. If it were anyone else he would have dropped the stick and charged in for a tackle to throw them off. But against Coach Brunt that would be like trying to fight a wood chipper with a tree branch.

Brunt loomed in front of him, the bright fluorescent lights above them casting deep shadows across her face. He could feel the cold of the wall seep into his shoulders where they touched.

She spoke softly now, almost to herself, “...You’re gonna have to do better than that.” She swung her bo staff down in a high overhand strike. 

Gray dodged under her raised arm just as her staff struck the wall where his head had been. The wood shattered on impact, sending jagged splinters flying all around them.

He spun, taking a low defensive stance as soon as he was out of her immediate range. Brunt turned to look at him. She tightened her grip on the remaining chunk of wood in her fist. 

There were several small cuts across the back of her hand that slowly oozed blood.

The tense moment stretched on, neither sure if the other would start fighting again despite the busted weapon. If there was anyone who could win a bo staff fight with only a wooden stake, it was certainly VILE’s combat expert. And if there was anyone who would stupidly keep fighting long past the point when they should have given up, it was him.

Gray dimly registered a spreading warmth on his face. He must have also gotten cut when the staff broke. 

He didn’t move to check.

Finally, Coach Brunt relaxed and let out a disappointed sigh. “Damn. It was just getting good, too.”

Gray stood up straight, resting his staff on the floor. Brunt took a moment to stretch her shoulders. “My next class starts in fifteen minutes. I’ve still got some paperwork for that old prune Maelstrom I need to do before that.”

“And let me guess,” Gray followed her line of thinking, “now it’s my job to clean all this up?”

Coach Brunt smirked and tossed the end of her staff over her shoulder. “That’s why we pay you the big bucks, Crackle.” She laughed and headed off in the direction of her office, “If I’m not back in time, start taking the kiddos through their bo staff katas. Seeing as you’re so talented at the sport.”

Gray didn’t bother hiding the sour look he shot at her back. It was very clear that he had lost the fight today, even if technically they hadn’t been keeping score.

The window on her door rattled as it closed. Gray leaned against his staff for a moment, running his other hand through his hair while letting out a yawn as the adrenaline of the fight drained away. His cheek twinged at the motion, and he became aware of a cold and wet sensation running down his jaw.

He swiped at the blood with the sleeve of his jumpsuit, sparing a glance at the vibrant red color before brushing his hand over it to dry faster.

Some things weren’t worth lingering over.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Dr. Bellum! I’m going to check on my tests from yesterday!” Gray announced as he walked into the laboratory. 

He couldn’t see the small woman anywhere, and the last time he’d surprised her in the lab he’d nearly gotten a syringe of ammonia straight to the chest. He heard some glassware rattling, then her voice echoed from the next room. “Yes, yes. I’ll be there shortly!” 

The laboratory was laid out in as orderly a fashion as could be expected from someone as eternally distracted as Dr. Bellum. Gray had been given a station in a back corner to do his own experiments but she hadn’t bothered rearranging anything to make getting to the table any easier. He had to squeeze between a table and a shelf, duck under the corner of a fumigation hood, and carefully step over a stack of file storage boxes before he could reach his little desk.

He found he didn’t really mind the gymnastics though, it was worth it for the only table next to a window. It was small and up near the ceiling, but if he stood on his chair he could see the ocean outside.

Gray didn’t indulge in the scenic view this time, instead looking over his eclectic collection of items littering the table; scattered tools, precarious towers of random machinery, flashing lights attached to bundles of wires, etc. He picked up a stack of books, turning over the bottom most one to reveal one of his tracking stickers inside the back cover. It looked alright but when he scanned for it with the GPS, it didn’t give off any signal.

He hummed to himself. The weight of the books must have broken something inside the tiny circuitry. He’d been adding a new book each day to see how much weight they could hold, and he was much closer to having his answer now. 

He looked over to where another three stickers were wired to a couple different devices, one to an absurdly large flashlight he’d pilfered from one of the Cleaners’ closets, one to an mp3 player that looped AC/DC on the lowest volume setting, and one to a little waving lucky cat statue that he’d found collecting dust on top of a cabinet. The stickers were meant to be hidden, so they couldn’t have any indications of being turned on or running out of batteries. Since he knew the watt-hours of the three devices, he was testing a few different battery options.

The flashlight was the heaviest drain on the electricity, he’d switched it on the day before yesterday and it looked like the battery died overnight. The light sensor he’d attached to the flashlight told him it had begun to dim around 14 hours ago, and had gone out completely at 2 in the morning.

The other two devices were still going strong.

Gray scribbled the information into his notebook along with a few new ideas for power generation he’d had after his lessons yesterday. Despite their intended use, he wondered if it might be worth working a few micro-solar panels into the design.

He shimmied out of his corner and opened one of the many lockers, scrounging around through scrap baskets for anything that he could solder together that might help his project along. He absently scratched at the bandaid he’d haphazardly slapped on before entering the laboratory.

The locker didn’t seem to have anything useful, but before he could decide where to look next, Bellum bustled in with her arms full of clamps and petri dishes.

“Crackle my boy, you would not believe the absolute trial today has been.” She dumped the petri dishes into his arms and took the clamps to the large sink on the far wall.

Gray followed, humoring her, “Did Neal track pool water all over the lab again?”

“Don’t even joke about that. No, Neal hasn’t been in at all. Whatever he was scheduled today, I should put in a recommendation that he do it exclusively.”

Gray wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with the petri dishes, some of them had black bacteria or fungus blooms on the bottoms while others were rusty brown. He waited behind her as she began rinsing off the clamps and beaker stands.

“No, this time it was that useless article Mime Bomb prancing about and mixing up my testing groups. He was playing some sort of carnival game with them I think, not that it really matters. Anyway he managed to contaminate all the samples with the stachybotrys that I was experimenting with and -”

“Er, wait...isn’t that-?” Gray looked again at the dishes in his arms.

“Yes, yes. Black mold. I wanted to see if I could change its growth pattern and structure without losing the pulmonary hemorrhaging characteristic to the species. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could make it grow in soil? Countless spores could be released with nothing more than a single footstep!”

Gray held the plastic plates as far away from himself as possible. “Yeah, uh, fascinating. Hey is it just me or do these smell a bit off?”

“Hmm?” Dr. Bellum paused in her maniacal planning, turning around to look at his arms with some confusion. “Have you developed some attachment to those petri dishes? Throw the bloody things away and come help me here.”

“Right-o Doctor.”

Gray carefully made his way to the hazardous waste bin, trying not to jostle the plastic as much as possible. He vaguely wondered what she had done to the brown ones, and hoped it hadn’t involved making the mold more prolific. That seemed like something she’d do and then not tell him about it.

By the time he returned, Bellum had finished scrubbing down the clamps and was loading them into the industrial washer below the counter. Gray reached to help arrange the bulky metal stands but was stopped when the doctor suddenly grabbed hold of his sleeve.

“Is this blood I see?” She adjusted her goggles, blinking up at his face for the first time since he’d entered the laboratory.

“Ah, yeah. Coach Brunt and I were-”

“Oh of course! Coach Brunt, how lucky.” Dr. Bellum interrupted. She rooted around in her various pockets for a minute. “I was wondering if I’d have to do it myself, but here you come in already prepared for me.”

“Hold on. What-? OW!” Gray reared back at the sudden shock of his bandage being ripped off. He could feel blood welling up again, and raised his hand to stop it from dripping.

Dr. Bellum smacked his hand down and held out a new bandaid, this one VILE green with the black V logo printed on the back. She grinned wide, “Here, try this one instead.”

Gray took it, hesitating before removing the paper backing. “I don’t suppose you’ve tested these at all before now, by chance?”

“Of course not. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” She waved dismissively from over her shoulder as she searched through one of the file boxes.

Gray sighed, but couldn’t argue the fact. He unpeeled the wax paper and stuck the new plaster to his cheek, bracing for any immediate pain.

Instead of pain, however, he was surprised to find a soft numbness slowly spreading out from where the bandaid sat. 

Dr. Bellum returned with a sheet of paper and shooed him away from the sink to a table with a few stools around it. She sat him down and placed the paper in front of him.

Gray stared down somewhat incredulously at a line of cartoon cat faces with the words “Rate Your Pain” across the top. The cat's expressions varied from crying on the far left to one with hearts for eyes and a fish in it’s mouth on the far right. Below the cats were a few lines with the request that he write down any sensations as well as a checklist of potential side effects he might feel.

“Headache, nausea, blurred vision, itching at application site, itching somewhere other than application site, swelling of lymph nodes, escapist fantasies, uncontrollable urge to dance, severe blood clots, drowsiness…? What on earth did you put in this thing?”

Dr. Bellum pulled a pair of scissors from the drawer under the tabletop and waved them around airily. “Oh, some of this some of that. Lidocaine, butamben, tranexamic acid, the usual stuff.”

Somehow the knowledge didn’t make him feel better. She pulled his arm with the stained sleeve closer, cutting off the cuff just above where the blood had soaked in and placing the fabric into a specimen bag.

Gray watched with dwindling surprise. “Do I want to know what you’re gonna do with that?”

“Probably not.” She tossed the bag into what appeared to be a cooler on the table behind them. “Now, off with the shirt.”

“That time already? Someone’s eager, eh?” He smirked as he unzipped his jumpsuit down to his waist and pulled his undershirt over his head.

Dr. Bellum smacked the back of his head with her tablet. “You make that joke every day. It’s never funny.”

Gray laughed and smoothed his hair back down, “You know what they say, get your kicks where you can.”

“I have no idea what that means.” 

Gray hissed as Bellum jabbed at the scar on his back with a cold pen tip. The skin there was still sensitive, thin and smooth though fully healed by now.

The first day after Poitiers, Dr. Bellum had cut him open and implanted a tracker between his shoulder blades. It sat just off-center from his spinal cord, tucked in between the spinal process and the transverse process of his fourth thoracic vertebrae. Or so he’d been told.

All he knew was that it had hurt like hell and that he was barely able to move freely now, nearly three weeks after the fact. He could still feel it under his skin when he stretched. Bellum checked its healing progress every day, claiming it was to keep an eye out for infection which could be devastating if it got into his spinal cord, but Gray knew it was also to make sure he hadn’t pulled it out overnight.

He was under express orders not to tamper with it in any way, though he doubted he’d be able to do much damage by himself anyway. He’d scanned the signals the implant was sending out and while they fell well within the parameters expected for a simple GPS, the tracker seemed far too big to only be transmitting that information. Looking at the size of the scar, and seeing the slight tenting of his skin over the object, it seemed to be nearly the length of his thumb and at least as wide around. He wondered if it was storing the information somehow, or storing some other information like his blood pressure or hormonal balances. Though why VILE would want that data was beyond him.

Dr. Bellum wiped the scar down with an antibiotic solution, fanning his back with her tablet so it dried faster. Gray felt there was some metaphor to be made about VILE burrowing under his skin and him not knowing what they left behind, but he didn’t care to make it. His life was pathetic enough without waxing poetic about the whole situation.

Dr. Bellum came around him to look at his face injury again, poking around the bandaid with the back of her pen. He didn’t feel it at all. 

He looked towards his desk in the back of the room, the sunlight streaming through the window illuminated some dust particles in the air. The white light of the laboratory made it difficult to distinguish but he swore he could tell where the sun and the fluorescent light met.

It was nice, he thought, to not have to think about what had happened for a while. Bellum strongly discouraged wallowing of any kind, especially on past failures, calling it a waste of time and energy. She considered mistakes nothing more than an opportunity for fine-tuning and generating new ideas.

Gray knew her only loyalty was to science, and the funding VILE provided her in order to do more science. That no matter how much she seemed to enjoy his presence she really only saw him as an especially talented lab rat and would be equally happy keeping him around forever as she would be putting him down tomorrow with some strange new poison, as long as she got to document the results.

But he found he was grateful, nonetheless, for her steady - if insane - presence. She truly didn’t seem to understand why the other Faculty members were making such a big deal out of the whole Black Sheep-Carmen Sandiego thing. As long as she had her laboratory, she was happy. As long as Gray kept being useful, he could stay.

Gray was disturbed from his meandering thoughts by the sound of Dr. Bellum drawing a firm X in the box next to ‘escapist fantasies’ on his evaluation sheet. He gave her his best winning smile and she rolled her eyes.

He spoke up as she began to walk away again, “Oi, can I put my shirt back on now?”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The plaster had been removed before he left the laboratory, Dr. Bellum sealing it into another specimen bag and sending him off with another of her classic eerie grins. The numbness wore off as he walked down the twisting hallways and his cheek stung again by the time he made it to Shadowsan’s classroom.

He knew the stealth instructor wouldn’t ask about the injury but he was sure he would judge him for having one in the first place. Blood left stains, clues, a way to be followed and captured and killed. A good thief never left a trace, a good criminal was always entirely in control.

But, well. That was the problem wasn’t it.

Gray slid open the door, focusing on the soft scrape of wood against wood as he stepped into the dim room. Shadowsan sat at his raised dais at the front of the classroom. He had a plain ceramic teapot next to him, the cup in his hands and the small spout on the pot steaming gently. A thin book sat on his other side.

He stared flatly at Gray as he entered. A scaly, nearly reptilian look in his emotionless eyes. The two watched each other without moving until Shadowsan lifted the teacup to his face. He closed his eyes as he drank and Gray knew a dismissal when he saw one.

He huffed out a breath of bitter laughter and felt the smirk tug on his cheek. The cut wasn’t bleeding anymore thanks to Bellum’s mystery bandaid, but the fresh scab was tight where his mouth pulled on it. Liable to break if he so much as yawned.

He made his way up to the front, unsure of what to expect. His classes with the stealth master weren’t origami and pickpocketing anymore. They were... not much of anything if he was being honest. Sometimes he cleaned the floor if Shadowsan’s class had been too rough, buffing out rubber scuffs and scrubbing at blood spots on the polished wood. Sometimes he touched up the rock gardens scattered around the classroom. Often he sat on the floor with Shadowsan in stifling silence for two hours, the teacher frowning almost imperceptibly at any indication that Gray might be tired or bored with the arrangement.

Today seemed ordinary enough. There was a soft bristled broom and a rake laying on the floor a few feet in front of Shadowsan’s seat, both perfectly perpendicular to the raised platform. Gray looked around, taking in the damage. 

There was sand scattered everywhere. One of the large stones in the right-most garden had been shifted nearly a foot from its usual place, one stone lantern was knocked over and another listed sideways. The left garden had clear body imprints in the fine gravel where students had been thrown, pits where they had clawed their way back up to keep fighting. 

Even the delicate middle garden had a few rogue footprints disrupting it. Gray wondered what they’d been doing that day to cause such mayhem, but doubted the stealth instructor would tell him. 

He knelt down to pick up the broom, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable with his neck and back exposed. He briefly regretted that he couldn’t grab both tools at once without giving his nerves away. Gray knew it was foolish to be afraid, Shadowsan wouldn’t attack him here. They both knew he didn’t matter enough to be worth the trouble. Yet Gray couldn’t let go of his instinctual grudge against the man who had always been so hard on Black Sheep. Who had failed her for unknowable reasons, thereby starting this whole mess to begin with. 

Gray stood up quickly, meeting the instructor’s eyes for a split second before walking away. 

As he swept the sand back into the garden beds, he could feel watchful eyes on his back. This didn’t feel like one of the days when Shadowsan demanded quiet contemplation from him, so Gray figured he might as well try to entertain himself and see where that got him.

“Do you reckon Professor Maelstrom and Coach Brunt have been arguing again?”

He heard a slightly heavier exhale from Shadowsan that he decided to take as encouragement to keep going. “The two can’t seem to decide what to do with me, you know, brainwashing-wise. Maelstrom says I need to take down Carmen Sandiego, Brunt says I need to bring back Black Sheep. It’s weird, almost like she’s two different people to them. You’d think out of everything else that goes into retraining, they’d at least agree on what angle to attack from.”

He paused to move to the other side of the room. “Now, I know what you’re gonna say.” Gray snuck a peek at the older man, holding back a snort of laughter at the face Shadowsan made. It was slight, as always, but there was a definite distaste at the suggestion that he would have anything to say in response to Gray’s babbling. 

He continued, “Obviously, no matter what we think of her, it’s not like I can’t do both at the same time. Take her down and bring her back. Whole thing’s just kinda weird though. Makes me wonder if it’s a fight or a long con. I just can’t figure out what they’d get out of sending two different messages like that.”

Gray finished sweeping and went back for the rake. He let the broom fall in approximately the same place it had been before and stepped on the upturned tines to bring the handle of the rake shooting into his hand.

Shadowsan’s eyes narrowed at his carelessness, but he went back to his tea without comment.

Gray began on the left bed, filling in the holes and carefully walking backwards with the rake so that his footsteps were erased by the smooth row of lines in the sand.

Shadowsan had never taught him the pattern for the raking, only had him rake again and again until he did it right or they ran out of time. He hadn’t even known the design the first time he’d had to do it. He’d been about five seconds from breaking the rake over his knee by the time the lesson ended. But the next time he came in they had all been perfectly shaped and he made sure to memorize the way the grooves intersected.

Gray chewed on his next words for a bit, surprised by the lack of a reprimand so far. “And you know, I wonder if maybe she isn’t two different people anyway? The Black Sheep I know would never have done anything as stupid as run away like this, she loved it here. But maybe Carmen Sandiego would. Black Sheep would have known that you never really escape VILE, but Carmen Sandiego is a bloody lunatic. I mean, She’s still a criminal but she’s also working with Interpol? What the hell kind of plan is that?! She’s gonna get herself arrested! Or worse!”

He stopped to curse under his breath. In his ranting he’d taken his focus off the rock garden, and the handle of the rake had bumped one of the stones he was circling. The crook in the lines he’d been making stared back at him almost mockingly. He knew he couldn’t simply move the rake back without creating another break in the lines, he would have to start the pattern over again so that the grooves overlapped properly.

There was some petulant joy in stomping over the other perfect lines though.

Gray was still grumbling to himself when Shadowsan spoke. “Perhaps you should be more concerned with your own circumstances, Crackle.”

Gray looked back up at him, frowning in confusion. Did Shadowsan mean that it didn’t matter what Carmen Sandiego - or Black Sheep - was doing? That his only job was to stop her no matter what that entailed and he was needlessly complicating things by trying to understand her? Or did he mean that whatever Maelstrom and Brunt were doing, he’d brought it on himself and he should be paying more attention to that rather than worrying about his best friend turned enemy?

All of these thoughts spilled into his mind in seconds, wrapping around each other and fogging up any clarity he thought he had on the subject. He ventured, resignedly “Is there any possibility of me convincing you to be less vague on that topic?”

Shadowsan glared at him, saying nothing. He pointedly picked up his book and opened it to a marked page in the middle.

“Yeah. I thought not.”

Gray went back to raking the sand, his thoughts as muddy as ever. Shadowsan was an expert in hiding the meaning of his words beneath seemingly innocuous or simple statements. They seemed to be intended to be read deeply into, but sometimes the conclusions Gray came to after dissecting them were alarming to say the least. 

Often they were like this one, implying that Gray was trapped in a cage of his own making and there was only one way out no matter what he thought or felt.

Other times, though, they seemed decidedly more dangerous. Bordering on traitorous. 

Gray often ran their conversations back through his head, wondering if he’d missed some tiny inflection that would tell him his conclusion was wrong. Because he had to be wrong. Shadowsan had to be testing him. Yet another trap set up by the Faculty for him to blunder into.

Because how could he report to the other Faculty members that Shadowsan had told him to ‘remain vigilant of his surroundings’? That was just plain good advice. But within the context of him complaining that Countess Cleo had been more free with her backhanded compliments lately, and that Professor Maelstrom had been failing his pop quizzes no matter what he answered?

He just thought it was an odd choice of words, is all. Advice incongruous with any question he’d implied that day.

Gray tightened his grip on the rake as he dragged it steadily around the bends of the garden design, his calloused palms slipping a little on the smooth wood of the handle. 

Maybe he was just going crazy, locked up on the Isle of VILE for so long. Maybe Shadowsan really didn’t mean anything more than ‘mind your own damn business, Crackle.’ and he was only reading so much into it because he had nothing better to do. No capers to plan, nothing to look forward to except more of this static wheel turning. Maybe his mind was turning on him, imagining ghosts in the hallways just to give him something to puzzle over.

Crikey, wasn’t that pathetic. Gray laughed out loud at the thought. The sound was harsh where it bounced off of the wood and paper paneling.

Shadowsan growled his annoyance from the front of the classroom, but the demon masks that lined the walls seemed to laugh with him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once he’d finished raking the gardens and Shadowsan had determined them satisfactory, Gray was released early. The other man hadn’t said anything else while Gray worked and Gray had remained lost in thought for the rest of the period. Maybe the early day was a reward for quiet compliance. Maybe it meant nothing. He could never tell with Shadowsan.

He paused as he walked out of the classroom. Dinner wasn’t until 7 in the evening, and there was nothing waiting for him back in his room. What would he do in the meanwhile?

If he was really a good little operative he would go back to Dr. Bellum’s lab to keep tinkering on his projects. Perhaps even start some new ones. That would definitely get him a gold star on Professor Maelstrom’s report card.

Or he could check back in with Coach Brunt and ask after her new classes. That would show some dedication to the cause.

Gray decided to take a walk down to the beach instead.

He skirted around the ever-present groups of students in the atrium of the school, hands jammed in his pockets and a ticked off look on his face. He didn’t feel particularly upset, but he didn’t want to seem open to conversation.

Once he made it to the sandy path down to the shore he let himself relax. The familiar sound of waves crashing brought a smile to his face and he reached up with one hand to brush a low hanging palm frond. Upon reaching the beach he turned and headed down towards the end of the beach, knowing students preferred to keep to the middle where the campus was a constant presence behind them.

He plonked himself down against an old driftwood log once he reached what he considered a reasonable distance, and reached into one of the many hidden pockets on his jumpsuit. He pulled out a handful of coins; a couple denominations of euros, a canadian loonie, and chinese yuan. Deciding on the loonie, he shoved the others back and zipped the pocked closed again.

Gray turned the coin over a few times, getting a feel for the weight of it. The polygonal edge rolled interestingly between his fingers. He brought his hand up in front of his chest, readying the coin to flip off his thumb.

"Heads, and I’m right about this all being a set up. Brunt and Maelstrom are trying to confuse me and Shadowsan is trying to tell me something important. There’s some funny politics going on behind the scenes and I should investigate that rather than simply follow instructions. Heads up and maybe Black Sheep had the right idea about this place."

He looked back up the beach to where he could see the school through the tropical canopy. If he squinted he could just make out Countess Cleo’s pointy shoulders on the only balcony that overlooked this part of the beach. 

"Tails, and I’m imagining everything. My lessons are what they are and I should focus on doing my damn job, not go chasing conspiracy theories and driving myself crazy when there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future no matter what and digging around is just asking for trouble."

The queen’s face stared blankly at him from where the coin sat on his finger.

He flicked it. The brass color glinted cheerfully in the sinking sunlight as it spun. Gray trapped it against the back of his hand as it fell.

He looked down at his hand where it covered the coin, feeling some anxiety rise despite there being no stakes to the game.

The waves crashed onto the sand in front of him. A soft breeze rustled the trees behind him. Sea spray blew up from the water and dusted his face, refreshing in the hot sun.

He closed his fist over the coin and shoved it into his pocket without looking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank goodness that's done. Writing this chapter was a nightmare and I still don't really like it. The reason this took so long was partially because I'm just a slow writer, partially because of the current global pandemonium, and mostly because I just don't know anything about bo staff fighting, chemistry, or electronics. So...
> 
> If I got anything wrong keep it to yourself. Let me live in ignorance. Also no one will be fighting with staffs ever again in this fic.


End file.
